Een scène uit het toneelstuk 'Wat Jonas overkwam' Possibly 1936

Fotobureau Stevens captured this black and white photograph, "Een scène uit het toneelstuk 'Wat Jonas overkwam'," freezing a moment from a play. It's got this informal quality, like a candid snapshot, but carefully staged. What strikes me is how the greyscale flattens the scene, turning the actors into shapes and forms. The textures, though muted, become almost sculptural – the fabric of the suits, the shine on the shoes. Look at the way the light catches the seated man's face in the centre, a cluster of faces gravitate towards him with a strange intimacy. There is something about how the light is uneven, how it dapples and obscures, that feels akin to early modernist experiments. It reminds me a little of Walker Evans in its understated approach, that same impulse to record a particular time, yet not in a way that necessarily reveals its explicit meaning. It feels open-ended, like art itself.