Seconds First

Review by Hans Aarsman in NRC There’s something about this book that makes me keep picking it up. I’ve already had it in my house for a few weeks and I still can’t pin down what makes it so special. No spectacular photo, no accessible theme. Whenever I open it, the book slips on to my lap while I drift into dreaming with a picture of the back of a bus driver’s head. The next time the daydreaming starts in front of a picture of a piano with a projection screen next to it. I can scarcely see a link between the photos, sometimes a shape recurs, or a colour, that’s all. However, they are irrefutably related to one another. Someone is trying to say something, but what? Sometimes it is best to begin at the beginning, sit down at a table and methodically write down everything you notice. The double title-page: SECONDS is printed on the left, FIRST is on the right. Both words are printed on a background that suddenly reminds me of the corrugated aluminium of my draining-board, that well-known honeycomb pattern. That is where the dishcloths are left. So this book is not a collection of someone’s most beautiful photographs. This is the stage on which the first violin may play, the one who would otherwise have to remain in the shadows: dishcloths, draining-boards. I see television sets in the book, a remote-control has even been given the leading role.