Middellandse Zee bij Griekenland before 1910

These photographs of the Mediterranean in Greece were made by Frédéric Boissonnas, sometime between 1880 and 1920, and printed in halftone. I love these, partly because the palette is so reduced, like a Morandi. The limited tonal range, this kind of warm gray, makes you see everything as form; you notice how the composition is split by the horizon line, or how the clouds echo the shapes of the waves. The image on the left, with the distant boat, and the suggestion of land, is somehow more melancholic than the one on the right, where the sea meets the sky in a blur of white. There's something about photography that invites us to see the world differently, a flattening of space and depth that is always so compelling, but also alienating. Like a Gerhard Richter painting based on a photograph, these images have a certain austerity that is very of its time, though the subject matter will always be timeless.