Op wacht en 'Arbeitskommando' 1940

This album page of silver gelatin prints, likely from around the 1940s, uses the black and white palette to create a narrative of stark, unadorned moments. What strikes me is the use of the monochrome to convey the feeling of being, well, without color, drained. There's something about the texture of the photographs, the way the light catches the surfaces, that feels immediate. The anonymity of the photographer really emphasizes the power of the subject; they aren’t trying to be poetic or self-expressive, they are just documenting, recording. This kind of objectivity actually becomes very powerful, because you are seeing the raw truth of things, unmediated. Look at the grainy texture in the photo of the Arbeitkommando, you can almost feel the rough texture of the soldiers uniforms. These are records of events, not aestheticized images. The work of someone like Helen Levitt comes to mind, she had that gift for taking photos on the street which are somehow ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. There's a sense of the world being complicated, and the artist's role is to make it visible.