PHOTO-ALBUM

As a photographer for Amsterdam canal roundtrip-by-boat companies, I took millions of snapshots when I was between the ages of 14 and 25. All over the world, there must be black-and-white photos in living rooms and forgotten drawers that I took of someone boarding a canal boat. That's where I got my taste for photography; my boss at the time, who was a professional photographer, helped me with assignments and even let me take the big professional camera with me. Everything was mainly still in black and white. Nowadays, photography is so intertwined with everyday life that you have to become increasingly critical in order to use the medium.

A photograph in the daily newspaper Trouw inspired me to do the following exercise in ekphrasis:

MAY I? An attempt at ekphrasis.

Based on a photograph by Boudewijn Bollemann in the daily newspaper Trouw on 27 December 2023.

Descriptio imaginis

If ever a photograph, taken on a random December morning, has touched me deeply, it is this one. In this article, I want to explain why.

Outside

The photographer took the photo in a classroom at a primary school in Rotterdam called Het Open Venster (The Open Window). That window, in the form of a panoramic window, features prominently in the photo and shows a winter view near a crossroads in Rotterdam. Bare trees line up in the background, their bareness reinforcing the feeling that we are dealing with one of those bitterly cold days that can characterise the month of December in Dutch cities.

            Opposite the school building from which the photograph was taken is another building, perhaps also a school, but the adjoining tower (?) set slightly further back in the building line suggests a religious building. In front of it are two (?) city buses and we see someone walking away; it could be a bus stop on the corner and the figure dressed in black may have just got off. It is difficult to tell whether the figure is pushing a suitcase or a trolley in front of him. Perhaps that rectangular obstacle is a rubbish bin, although its pontifical placement in the middle of the pavement would greatly impede the progress of pedestrians.

            The window has a frame at the top that looks like a stained-glass mosaic, particularly common in the architectural style of the 1920s and 1930s, but the standardised suspended ceiling and floor covering do not support this observation. On closer inspection of the digital copy of the photograph, it appears that this is not an architectural feature, but an added festive decorative element, a frieze of transparent material. 

INSIDE

The photograph was taken in December, which explains why a string of decorative lights, of the kind usually used to decorate a Christmas tree, has been hung around the window. On the windowsill is a copy of a book: Just an Ordinary Street Through the Centuries. A Walk Through 12,000 Years of History by Anne Millard with illustrations by Steve Noon.The photo serves as an illustration for an article in the daily newspaper about the method this school is developing to prevent children from falling behind in reading. A recent alarming report warned about this, and according to the opinion magazine De Groene this is largely due to allowing market forces to influence the teaching methods used in primary education. The presence of the book illustrates this school's ambitions to follow its own path in this regard

            On a standard school desk with two chairs for two pupils, there are a few objects that cannot be clearly defined due to the printing technique. A folding map? A pen on a string? Unfortunately, this photo does not appear to be included in the series of photos that the photographer has published on his own website (copyright issue?) and the digital version of Trouw (where these details would have been more distinguishable) does not offer the same photographic material as the printed version. Fortunately, the photographer himself sent me a digital copy, on which the objects can be distinguished: writing implements on one side of the table, with a white cardboard sign on the other side, caught in an unfolded rectangular cut-out of green cardboard.

Focus

The winter scene outside contrasts with the interior of the well-lit classroom, where the subject in the centre of the photograph immediately attracts all the attention: it is a young boy, a pupil from around Year 7. The boy raises his finger: he wants to attract attention because he thinks he knows the answer to a question from the teacher, who is apparently standing to the right outside the frame. He has risen from his chair to raise his right hand. His left hand rests relaxed on the table.

            He is a boy with almost black straight hair, dark eyebrows and chestnut brown eyes, so not a standard blond, blue-eyed Dutch boy from a well-to-do family. He is standing at his school desk between the two chairs. The chair in front of him is empty, the chair behind him is covered with a sporty black jacket with white sleeves, striped elastic bands and coloured accents. It is probably his own jacket and it bulges in such a way that one can assume that a small backpack is hanging on the back of the chair. The position of the writing utensils shows that the boy was sitting in the back seat before he got up. The boy looks neat and well-groomed; he is wearing black jeans or tracksuit bottoms and a black or anthracite T-shirt with a colourful print on the back, which cannot be seen in its entirety. Trainers complete his outfit, and he has fashionably left his laces untied.

            Due to the cropping used by the photographer, we can just see a strip of the backs/backs of the heads, colourful rucksacks and jackets of two other (girls?) pupils, and on the left, just houseplants and a glimpse of other tables, but everything revolves exclusively around that little boy who is trying hard to get his turn: he stands alone, detached in the room, it's all about him. The surroundings, the other children, the teacher: the photographer has made their presence dependent on the boy in the centre of the photo.

Questions

Is he also sitting alone at the table?

Does this school not have coat hangers?

Was this boy born in Rotterdam to Dutch parents? So how many boxes does he tick?

Does he want to ask a question about the book next to him? Or is he responding to a question from the teacher? Will teachers still be addressed with "master" like they were in 1960?

In my childhood, it was customary to raise two fingers to indicate that you did not want to ask a question but wanted permission to go to the toilet. Is that still the case?

What kind of family does he come from? In any case, he is not materially neglected, but this is not a primary school in a middle-class neighbourhood of Rotterdam, on the contrary, so we can assume that he is not a child from a wealthy family either.

Does he have a mole on his right forearm, or did that forearm come into contact with, say, a felt-tip pen while he was working intently at his desk?

Ekfrasis

Endearment is too weak a word to describe my multifaceted reaction to this image. What might the boy's name be? Pablo, I hope, perhaps Angel, but it could also be Anwar or Mo. Or simply Jesse. I look at this little boy and I hope, or rather, I want him to be a Mediterranean boy, just like I once was. And that he is eager to learn. Very much so, just like I did back then. The boy politely does what he is told, but he is definitely curious and wants to know things. That's why he doesn't just raise his finger a little, his right hand doesn't stop halfway at shoulder height, but he stretches his arm as far as it will go vertically: he is convinced that he knows the answer to the question, or that the observation he wants to share, or the question he wants to ask, is worthwhile.

            He finds himself, just as I once did, in a classroom at a primary school in a large Dutch port city where ships from all continents have been mooring and departing for centuries. Its colourful population reflects this. It is a distinctly modern, rebuilt city, formed after the last world war. Outside, the icy wind cuts and the lashing rain whips, but fortunately he is sheltered inside and participating in the great process that is taking place in and around him: preparing for later, when he has left his childhood behind and begun his independent adult life. From boy to man, in a century of great, unpredictable, unimaginably radical transitions. But for now, he is still a boy with the charm of a blank page, with the promise of a life that beckons, a life that entices.

            Behind the window lies the city that will challenge him, the city that will hinder and confuse him, but hopefully also nurture and stimulate him. Within reach lies a book, a history book: one of the tools he will need to hold his own. On the chair next to him lies his jacket, which will protect him from the winter cold that prevails in the Netherlands, in the public space formed by the chilly streets and windy squares of the city. And I, an elderly male fairy, sing him good wishes on his way, wistfully but with a steady voice.

            The photographer has chosen to focus the image solely on him and to leave out the other classmates, as well as the teacher. Only this one boy stands fully in the centre. An individual in the making. The photograph reaches towards a future but is also like a memory. Not a memory of a specific event but of a state, a position, a way of being. Is this life itself? You raise your finger and hope that it will be your turn to say something? Or to ask something? Again and again?

Javier López Piñón

FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of meeting countless colleagues and friends. Here is a small selection from that enormous number of moments.

DRAWING

I have only recently started working on it more seriously, but I have always enjoyed drawing. For some time now, I have been drawing regularly from a model, in a group that meets every week under the guidance of Ietje Rijnsburger.

PERFORMING

Every now and then, I find it important to “look the other way” and participate in a production as an actor/performer.