Gat in de Nolledijk 1945 - 1949

This photograph, "Gat in de Nolledijk," captures a scene of churning waters, taken by Anefo. Looking at this image, it feels like I’m right there, staring into the belly of a storm. I imagine Anefo, probably cold and damp, making decisions about where to point the camera, what to include, what to leave out. There’s a lot of gray here, but it’s not a flat gray; it's a whole symphony of grays, from the sky to the roiling waves. The way the water rushes in to fill the hole, the Nolledijk, is almost scary, a kind of raw power that’s hard to look away from. You can almost feel the push and pull of the sea, the weight of the water as it crashes against the shore. It’s a reminder that nature doesn't care about us; it just does what it does. And that’s something painters like me are always trying to capture—that real, messy, uncontrollable energy of the world.