Ruïnes aan het Oostplein, gezien vanaf de Nieuwe Markt c. 1940 - 1945

This photograph, by J. Nolte, shows the ruins at Oostplein, seen from the Nieuwe Markt. It's a study in greys, a tonal landscape of devastation. The beauty of a photograph is that the image is built through a process of pure indexicality, an impression of light and shadow. This one has a specific texture to it, a kind of granularity that comes from the period, and perhaps the conditions under which it was shot. What I find interesting are the vertical marks throughout the image, little spikes that suggest the remnants of walls or posts, reaching up from the rubble. They're like desperate attempts at reconstruction, or maybe defiant assertions of what once was. This photograph reminds me a bit of the Bechers’ work, where they photographed industrial structures, allowing the images to speak to history and time. Photography, like painting, becomes a way of understanding and remembering the world, full of questions and no easy answers.