Landschap met bomen before 1901

This photograph, "Landschap met bomen", was made by Reginald Craigie, most likely with a camera and darkroom process, sometime before 1930. The tones are so subtle, it’s a quiet symphony in grayscale. The way Craigie teases out the forms, especially in the trees, feels so intuitive. He’s not just recording what he sees, he's interpreting it, feeling it out. There’s a mark-making equivalent in painting, where you keep adding, subtracting, and adjusting until the image feels right. Look at how the light catches the edges of the foliage, and the stark contrast with the dark trunks. It's a study in contrasts, light against dark, texture against smooth. It reminds me of some of the landscapes by Alfred Stieglitz, both artists using the camera to find the abstract and emotional within the real world. And isn't that what art is all about, anyway? A conversation across time, a way of seeing that’s both deeply personal and universally human.