Secretly danced
I found her at the NDSM site in Amsterdam, almost hidden, on a block of concrete. It looks as if she’s dancing while taming a rebellious lock of hair. Sometimes you catch that fleeting moment, when you see someone attractive making a graceful move. You’d want to dance with her, but the moment is already […]
Punk
She glances over her shoulder, in a pose made famous by Johannes Vermeer in his painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. But she’s of a different caliber. Her hair is red, she’s wearing a black leather jacket with a raven on it, and she looks a bit disdainful. It reminds me of Punk, a youth […]
Baroque
The street is wild, untamed, and sometimes dangerous. Luckily, this little girl is protected by a sturdy baroque frame that not only surrounds her but shields her as well. She can peacefully drift away with her eyes closed, lost in her own pink cloud. “All that is valuable is defenseless,” wrote Lucebert. I understand what […]
In Tinder we trust
Tinder, the search engine for love—what do we really think of it? In this photo, the message is clear: “In Tinder we trust”… but also… “are lost.” What is the man with the protest sign trying to say? Is he commenting that everything, even something as beautiful and intimate as love, is now for sale […]
Icon
Andy Warhol, depicted as an icon from the Greek Orthodox Church. The icons painted in this tradition are considered sacred, imbued with the power of the holy figure, and must not be altered in form. Warhol, too, is an icon, but of Pop Art—a movement that was far from advocating eternal value, instead aligning with […]
Adele
Gustav Klimt lived in the sophisticated city of Vienna, a pioneer of modern art and a free-spirited man. Women of the time were also breaking free, often posing for Klimt and, in some cases, having affairs with him. This is Adele Bloch-Bauer, a high-society woman who possibly had a romantic relationship with the painter. In […]
Face
A face, but whose face? It gazes at us with a melancholic and thoughtful expression. Or perhaps, more accurately, he gazes past us. Above him, the bare shoulder of a young woman, and below him, a child holding what I think is a watercolor palette. He’s placed in a spot where they sell a lot […]
Badehaus
The Badehaus is no longer a bathhouse, but it once was. The workers at the train repair station could wash themselves there after a long day of hard work and then head home clean. In the living barracks, there likely weren’t many bathing facilities at that time. If you read the stories about East Berlin […]
Woke
In the Netherlands, there was a TV commercial aimed at teaching boys not to be too pushy with their sexual advances. The background music was The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. Fortunately, the commercial ended well—no sex, but there was intimacy—while Mick helpfully sang, “But if you try sometimes, well, you […]
Müll 2
Duchamp was a famous artist who came up with the idea of placing a urinal in a museum, thus transforming it into a work of art simply by changing the context in which the object was placed. Sometimes a trash can is no longer just a trash can, but an art object that has lost […]