Two courtyards

January 7th

Above on the left, there is a painting by Pieter de Hooch “The Courtyard of a House in Delft” painted in the year 1658. On the right, there is a photo of a courtyard of a building in Bialystok taken by me in the year 2022.

Unlike in the painting, in my photo there are no people present — could be that because I took that photo early in the morning on New Year’s Day. There is a time difference of 364 years and a spatial distance of about 1400 kilometers between those two places. There is, of course, a cultural gap between the Dutch XVII century Golden Age and the Polish XXI century sliding-into-fascism-Age. Other than that, to me, they both look a lot the same.

Well, the perspective is different — in the painting, we are looking out of the courtyard to the street. In the photo, we are looking into the courtyard from the street. In both cases, there is something hidden.

In the painting, there is a disorder and dirt of the wooden box and an old bucket and some not plastered brickwork that we see, but it’s unseen from the street. In the photo, what I hid from the view is the fact that the actual building is a dilapidated, crime-ridden drug and alcohol den.

Pieter de Hooch decided in his painting to show us viewers what was hidden from the prying eyes of all passing by in the street in front of the house. In my photo, I decided to hide what is visible and known about this house by all passing by in the street in front of the house.

In my case, I kept the secret and the mystery. I am not sure if that was my aim. It just happened this way as I was looking for an aesthetic way to frame my photo. It was random, but I like the way it turned out.

Most connections are just that — random happenings across time and place.