Else Wachenheimer-Moos loopt met haar echtgenoot Eugen Wachenheimer over de pier van Scheveningen, 1924, Scheveningen 1924

This photograph shows Else Wachenheimer-Moos and her husband Eugen Wachenheimer walking on the pier of Scheveningen, in 1924. What strikes me is the photograph's surface: the way it is glued onto the album page, with the handwritten place name below. It's a photograph of a photograph, one step removed from the original moment, a copy of a memory. The cool grey tones of the black and white image give a wonderful sense of the weather conditions, of sea mist and pale light on a northern coast. The woman on the left of the frame seems to be leaning on the railings, observing the couple, us, or the sea. For me, this picture reminds me of the tradition of German realist photography of the interwar period, particularly the work of August Sander, who sought to document the German population through portraiture. The clarity and objectivity of the image is what makes it so compelling. This is art as documentation, as a way of seeing and understanding the world around us.