The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending by Berend Strik — echoing Julian Barnes's novel title — explores themes of memory, conclusion, and the construction of narrative meaning. The ending is not simply a termination but a retrospective construction: we only understand an ending when we look back at what preceded it.

Strik's stitched photographs operate similarly: the textile interventions are added after the photograph is taken, yet they transform our understanding of what the photograph originally captured. The "ending" — the final stitched state — reinterprets the "beginning" — the original photograph.

As Strik states: "Photos are imaginary... For me, photos are unfinished, open, incomplete." His practice of adding layers over time makes visible this fundamental incompleteness and the possibility of ongoing reinterpretation.

The work connects to broader philosophical questions: how do we construct meaning from fragmentary evidence? How does memory work — not as faithful recording but as an active, selective process of reconstruction?

Sources: Wikipedia