Fotoreproductie van een schilderij met een gezicht op de Mont Sainte-Victoire bij Aix-en-Provence door Paul Cézanne uit de collectie Hoogendijk, nu in The Barnes Foundation c. 1915

This is Koop Remmerts Semplonius's photograph of a Cézanne painting, the Mont Sainte-Victoire. It’s a reproduction, so already once removed from the thing itself. I really feel for Semplonius, right, because he's trying to translate Cézanne's obsession. He had to get across the weight of the mountain, that feeling of distance and atmosphere through tone and composition, through the monochrome constraint. It makes me think about something I grapple with, and that's how the physical act of painting really forces us to slow down and look closely. Cézanne's brushstrokes were deliberate, searching. Every mark must have been about capturing not just the appearance of the mountain, but the feeling of being there, in front of it. There's a real relationship between the hand, the eye, and the thing observed that is really so special. In a way, Semplonius is doing the same, it's just a different tool and technique.