Paardenkar en dorpelingen in een straat in Gauw, op de achtergrond een kerktoren c. 1905 - 1907

Folkert Idzes de Jong made this photograph of a horse-drawn cart and villagers in a street in Gauw, with a church tower in the background. It’s printed in sepia, which gives it a soft and diffused quality, like a memory fading at the edges. What I notice is the way the light seems to glow from within the image, particularly in the sky and the road. It's almost as if the artist were painting with light, trying to capture a fleeting moment in time. Look at the texture of the photograph: the graininess, the subtle variations in tone. There’s a beautiful tension between the sharp details of the architecture and the blurry figures in the street. The way the sepia tones wash over everything, it's like looking at an early Corot painting - a similar kind of muted palette, a similar sense of light and atmosphere. It reminds us that art is always in conversation with itself, across time and across media.