Onbekende man aan een water before 1902

W. van Renynghe made this photograph of a man by some water, and it’s an image captured, it seems, through a veil of atmosphere. You know, I often think about what it must have been like for artists before photography was widespread. How did they record the world around them? What details did they choose to focus on, and how did they interpret what they saw? The cool thing about photographs like this is the way it embraces ambiguity. The trees are mere suggestions, the water almost vibrates, and the man...well, he’s just a figure, lost in thought, perhaps? There's no pretense here. Van Renynghe seems to be saying: *This is a moment. A fragment.* I bet he would have liked the work of Gerhard Richter, who also explored the effect of blur and focus in his paintings, obscuring the clarity of the original image to question the nature of representation. The two are separated by time, but their work remains in conversation. It's all one big, messy exchange!