Willem van den Berg met een vrouw en een jongen bij een rivier in Makuleke, Zuid-Afrika 1968

This small snapshot shows Willem van den Berg with a woman and a boy by a river in Makuleke, South Africa; we don’t know when it was made, but you can almost feel the warmth of the sun and hear the gentle lapping of the water. The surface is smooth, almost like a memory carefully preserved. Look how the colours, soft and muted, create a sense of calm. My eye is drawn to the reflections on the water, where the sky and the land seem to merge. It’s like the artist is inviting us to lose ourselves in a moment of quiet contemplation. The water itself is a single flat plane, the artist has clearly tried to capture the image as it is, as a pure, unadulterated observation. This approach to representation reminds me of the work of the artist Fairfield Porter, especially the way he could capture the essence of a scene. This image feels more than just a photograph; it is a meditation on light, water, and the human connection to the natural world.