Bedoeïenen bij een opgraving bij Tell Fara, met hun kamp op de achtergrond 1929

This photographic print captures Bedouin workers at an excavation site near Tell Fara, with their camp in the background, by Richard St. Barbe Baker. The sepia tones, like a memory fading, give the scene a timeless quality. I notice the way the figures blend with the earth, a kind of camouflage. There's a tactile quality even in this flat image – you can almost feel the grit and the heat. The long shadows cast by the figures remind me of mark making with charcoal, smudging the edges, blurring the lines between form and shadow. That line of workers, stretched out along the excavation, feels both ordered and chaotic, a rhythm of light and dark, of bodies and earth. This photograph, with its simple palette and stark composition, makes me think of artists like Gerhard Richter, who also played with the idea of blurring and focusing, revealing and concealing. Like Richter, St. Barbe Baker seems to be saying something about the nature of seeing itself.