Toren van de Hervormde Kerk te Noordwijk-Binnen 1890 - 1920

Here we have an anonymous photograph of the Toren van de Hervormde Kerk te Noordwijk-Binnen. I'm immediately struck by the limited tonal range here. It's all in the beiges and browns and the image is soft, almost dreamlike. There is a lovely, and very typical, tension between the soft, almost out-of-focus quality, which brings a strong sense of atmosphere, and the hard architectural geometry of the buildings. The light isn't coming from anywhere really, it's just sort of everywhere. It’s like the photo is more interested in the idea of a building, or perhaps of buildings, than in the buildings themselves. It’s the kind of image that makes me think of other photographic artists, like Atget, who made similarly evocative cityscapes. There's something so lovely and strange about the way an image can speak across time.