Duitse militairen in Marken Possibly 1944 - 1945

These small black and white photographs, titled 'Duitse militairen in Marken', meaning 'German soldiers in Marken' in English, have an amateur quality about them. The rough edges where they’ve been torn from a roll feel so immediate. I wonder who took these photographs and what their intentions were in the act of recording these moments. Were they trying to document something or simply recording an experience they were having? Maybe it was an attempt to normalize what was happening around them, or maybe, conversely, it was an attempt to come to terms with the new reality. I think of artists like Gerhard Richter who used photographs as source material for his paintings, transforming found images into something new. In this case, the anonymity of the artist allows us to project our own ideas and interpretations onto them. The relationship between photography and painting is a constant source of fascination for me. Both art forms offer different ways of seeing and interpreting the world, but ultimately, they are both expressions of human experience. It’s all one big conversation, right?