Treinstation Soerabaja 1949

Curator: Hello, welcome! Today we're looking at a photographic print entitled "Treinstation Soerabaja," created in 1949 using the gelatin-silver process. Editor: Thanks! Looking at this album page with multiple photographs, I’m drawn to the contrast between the images of people, trains, and landscape and their arrangement on this brown album paper, as though creating a collage, which really has a somber feel. What do you see when you examine it? Curator: The organization is indeed remarkable. Focus on each individual photograph. Do you see the variations of horizontal and vertical compositions and what might this be signalling? Editor: Well, the photographs are small, black and white and oriented both horizontally and vertically. I'm not sure, I suppose that's a stylistic choice. Are you suggesting a symbolic meaning beyond aesthetics? Curator: Yes, absolutely. Examine the use of lines and perspective within the train station photographs. Observe how the artist plays with depth, leading the eye along the railway tracks. And what about the varying placement of the subjects in relation to each other in the other pictures? How might these formal arrangements underscore meaning within the entire ensemble? Editor: Hmm, it's like the landscape and structures in the photo of the train are going to a vanishing point. The contrast feels unbalanced between the top images and the others and they give a feeling of motion that is juxtaposed against images of what I think are groups of people posed. That juxtaposition could be drawing on something else I'm not aware of though... Curator: Consider that the station is presented as almost devoid of activity, even as we notice structural rhythms and the variations in linear arrangements. I am most intrigued by this tension as form generating content, creating layers for an analysis into meaning. Editor: Okay, I see what you're getting at. I never thought of a photograph being more than the thing it depicted, but by playing with perspective and ordering subjects you give an emotional depth that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Curator: Precisely. Understanding how formal elements combine enables a nuanced appreciation and unearths its many meanings.