Zitkamer 1935

This photograph titled, Zitkamer, was made by Elsa Silberstein and resides in the Rijksmuseum. There’s something so tender about this presentation, isn't there? The way the photograph is framed within these thick, textured pages. You can feel the hand of the artist at work, carefully constructing a world within a world. It's like a stage set, and the ornament takes center stage. Look closely at the dark metal filigree of the object; it’s hard to tell what its function might have been. Perhaps the artist found beauty in the unexpected, elevating the everyday to something extraordinary. Silberstein reminds me a little of Joseph Cornell and his shadow boxes, a real magpie sensibility. I like to imagine her, like Cornell, collecting objects, arranging and re-arranging them until they struck some inner resonance. There's real magic to that, and that's how artists build an ongoing conversation across time. Like all art, this piece embraces ambiguity and invites us to bring our own stories to it.