The illiterate of the future, it has been said, will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.
But must we not also count as illiterate the photographer who cannot read his own pictures?
The remarkable thing about these pictures, however, is their emptiness.
So much for the snapshot.
The camera becomes smaller and smaller, ever readier to capture transitory and secret pictures which are able to shock the associative mechanism of the observer to a standstill.
On the other hand, photography cannot do without people.
The city in these pictures is empty in the manner of a flat which not yet found a new occupant.
But it was no longer a portrait. What was it?
Young faces [...] it was no longer a portrait, what was it? is geïnspireerd op Walter Benjamin’s filosofische essay A short history of photohraphy (1931), over de geschiedenis en betekenis van de fotografie. De onderschriften bij de portretten zijn citaten uit Benjamin's essay.
1931
