Gezicht op de oude Sint-Ignatiuskerk te Nijmegen 1890 - 1920

This monochrome photograph shows the old Sint-Ignatiuskerk at Nijmegen through the eyes of an anonymous photographer. I’m imagining them standing there, adjusting the camera, composing the frame, thinking about light and shadow. The building itself is so striking, isn’t it? I bet the photographer felt a certain sense of awe in the presence of such architecture. The way the spires reach upwards, almost like extended fingers pointing to the heavens, evokes a sense of aspiration. I can see the photographer thinking about depth and space, about how to capture this feeling. It makes me wonder about the other photographers working at the time, all those artists grappling with the possibilities of this fairly new medium. It’s a conversation that has been going on since the beginning of art – what’s real, what’s captured, what’s invented, what’s felt? And how do we share that? These are just a few of the many questions that artists pose to one another across time.