Omslag voor 111 foto's en fotomechanische afdrukken van Nederlands-Indië c. 1895 - 1915

This photo album of Dutch East Indies, a container for a history, was made anonymously. There's a quiet, almost stubborn quality to the cover's plainness. The muted maroon feels less chosen than simply arrived at – the residue of use and time. You can almost feel the texture of the cloth, like something that has been rubbed smooth with the unconscious passing of hands. The imperfections around the edges make the piece. They give the album a sense of lived experience, of being a repository of memories imperfectly preserved. See where the corner is bumped and worn? To me it embodies the way history is a messy, fragmented thing, held together as much by chance as by intention. This album reminds me a bit of the work of Gerhard Richter, who blurs the lines between abstraction and representation, inviting us to question the nature of seeing itself.