Landschap met sawah, voormalig Nederlands-Indië c. 1900

This landscape of a former Dutch colony was captured by Onnes Kurkdjian in a photograph. The orderly "sawah," or rice paddy, mirrors human intervention in nature. These fields, meticulously terraced, represent not just agriculture but also a profound cultural adaptation to the land. Consider, for example, the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia: temples built as terraced platforms. These rice paddies, like those ancient structures, reflect a human desire to organize and control the environment. The mountain in the background looms large, as if watching over human labor, reminding us of the tension between nature's grandeur and human endeavor. This dichotomy plays out across cultures, symbolizing our eternal quest to find harmony with the natural world, and our futile ambition of controlling it. Here, nature is not just a backdrop but a powerful force engaging us on a deep, subconscious level. The terraced fields, the looming mountain, each element carries echoes of human history.