Go en Jan Kessler op een terras in Jonsdorf, Saksen c. 1910

Here we have a photograph of Go and Jan Kessler on a terrace in Jonsdorf, Saxony, by Hermann Johannes (Boelie) Kessler. The sepia tones give the whole scene a kind of soft, dreamlike quality, and the way the light falls feels so natural, like a fleeting moment captured just as it was. You can tell that Kessler wasn’t trying to create a perfect image, but rather to record a real moment in time. What really grabs me is the texture. The graininess of the photograph gives everything a tactile quality. I can almost feel the rough texture of the building behind them. And the way the light catches the leaves of the tree, creating a dappled effect, is just beautiful. There’s something so casual about the composition, too, like Kessler just happened to be there at the right moment. Kessler’s image reminds me a little of Eugène Atget, in that same sense of capturing the everyday beauty of a particular time and place. What I love most is the ambiguity, the sense that there’s more to the story than what we can see on the surface.