Landscape c. 1920

Léonard Misonne made this landscape photograph, small in scale, and rendered entirely in brown. You know, I'm wondering about that single figure way in the back, and how the artist might have felt, waiting for them to enter the composition. This landscape makes me think about how artists frame the natural world. What do they choose to show us, and how does that choice reflect their own perspective? Does the viewer feel alone in the landscape? Or protected by the trees? The lines of the trunks create a vertical rhythm, a kind of musicality as the viewer's eye travels through the composition. Misonne is in conversation with all of those artists that came before him: Corot, Monet, and the Barbizon School painters, who were interested in the relationship between humans and nature. Each photographer, each painter, offers a unique interpretation, adding their own voice to the ongoing dialogue.