Gezicht op de Jungfrau 1897 - 1924

The Gebrüder Wehrli, whoever they were, made this photograph of the Jungfrau mountain, sometime in the past. It’s giving me Caspar David Friedrich vibes, that whole Romanticism thing, but flattened, drained of colour. You know, a lot of the time, when you're painting, you're not really dealing with what's there, but trying to create this feeling, an atmosphere. I imagine these brothers felt something looking at this mountain. I feel for them, trying to capture this massive thing with whatever equipment they had back then. I mean, how do you translate that scale, that icy hugeness? What kind of lens did they use, what was the weather like? The way the light fades into the distance, it’s like they're saying, “This is bigger than us, bigger than anything.” And they found a way to show it. Anyway, these guys were part of a longer conversation, I reckon, trying to show the unshowable. That's what keeps artists going, right?