Karavanserai tussen Derjaan en Teheran, Perzië Possibly 1925

A.G.A. van Eelde made this photograph of Karavanserai between Derjaan en Teheran in Perzië, though it's hard to put a precise date on it. The photo has an almost bleached-out palette, all greys and off-whites, that makes you think about light and how it can flatten and expand space at the same time. The surface of the print is smooth but strangely textured too, like tiny bumps across the whole picture plane. It's as if you could almost run your hands across the surface of the desert it depicts. Your eye is drawn to the figures standing in the stark environment. The karavanserai itself is like one long stroke of a pen, the little arches of the arcade like repeating marks. It reminds me of those long scrolls in Chinese landscape paintings, or even, weirdly, of Agnes Martin's grids. There’s a shared love of repetition, of the subtle variations of a single form. It speaks to the dialogue between different artistic traditions, and the potential to see echoes of one another across time and space. Isn't art just the most beautiful conversation?