Rotterdam harbour

Former offices of the Holland-America shipping line, right on the headland (now the New York Hotel)

This morning I walked to the Wilheminakade and – with Heart of Darkness still floating around my mind – recalled that the Dutch, too, had a far-ranging empire. The warehouse complex with Java, Sumatra, Borneo and Celebes (I had to look it up) in large stone letters at the top were a reminder (but not as loaded a one as the “Entrepôt du Congo” in Antwerp). The sculptures on the New York Hotel (like the Albert Memorial) were of their time.

Another indication of how times change was the relative size of the building. At one time it would have dominated its little promontory. From a river tour of the harbour, however, you can clearly see how it has been eclipsed:

I visited the Dutch Fotomuseum and saw some portraits by Paul Citroen (who he?) from the 1930s and 40s. There was also a “layered” exhibition of photographs from 1970s Nicaragua by Koen Wessing showing the murder of a farmer and his daughters’ grief. They had been curated by Alfredo Jaar, who had then produced his own work from it. I knew nothing of this when I stepped in: I took the gallery attendant’s advice and looked at the photographs in a state of ignorance. I found them unsettling and puzzling: the death, the grief I could understand . . . but the little group to one side seemingly disengaged – what were they thinking or talking of? And then I began to question my own thoughts: my initial horror was, I believe, real, but I began to wonder if the photographs were authentic or staged. Was I being manipulated? Did it matter? After all, one result of engagement with art – and if these photographs were staged, then it was art – is empathy and depth of understanding. Isn’t it?

But, no, Wessing’s photographs were real. There was a further selection from Chile in 1973 of heavily armed soldiers in ordinary streets. My first thought on seeing scenes of a soldier searching a woman’s handbag was that it looked like something from Nazi Germany until I thought of newspaper photographs of Belfast in the 1970s. Sometimes it’s closer than you think.

The boat tour of the docks was like a peek into the giant engine room that keeps the relentless human economy ticking over. Not pretty, but impressive (all that ingenuity!) and frightening (in pursuit of what?) in view of the environmental destruction we’re causing.