Photographs, as Hans Aarsman prefers them, are not taken to make a nice picture but only because they attract the photographer’s attention and because he just feels like taking a picture of them. Photo Libretto van Eddy Posthuma de Boer is full of it.

Or as Winogrand said:

Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.

I knew Eddy Posthuma de Boer was the photographer who had taken the pictures in Cees Nooteboom’s books.

Here and there, the images are shrewd like Elliot Erwitt: black-and-white dalmatians at a crosswalk, an Arab who appears to be trying to fix an overturned car, fiddling with the engine with one hand, but a few meters away lies the rear axle of the car—a huge pile of square blocks of metal from cars pressed together.

Photo Libretto is a calendar. A picture every day of the year. Arranged by themes, or rather collections of photos. Texts on signs on storefronts with spelling mistakes. Means of transportation. French cars are rotting and becoming part of the French landscape. People reading the newspaper. Companies and products with the name Victoria.

Ordinary and remarkable images. Marte Röling’s Star Fighter. A hotel reception in Marseille is unimaginably crowded with wallpaper and carpet with floral designs. The tower of Pisa straightened (and thus the surroundings askew). A hotel room with a bathtub set in the middle of the room with a shower curtain around it (only possible in Belgium, I think).

The most admirable pictures are still the everyday things rendered without further context, which produce insane images. A neat little plant table made of Pepsi crates. Eggleston, then, I think.