To bij woudreus op Tourtonne 1903 - 1910

Hendrik Doijer created this cyanotype, a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print, some time between 1863 and 1925. I can imagine Doijer out there in the field with his camera and chemicals, carefully timing his exposure to get this dreamy blue effect. It’s like he's painting with light and shadow, turning a photograph into something else, a memory almost. I wonder what he was thinking when he framed this shot. Was he intrigued by the contrast between the woman's white dress and the dark, tangled forms of the surrounding jungle? Or was he simply captivated by the towering presence of the tree, this ‘woudreus’, as it’s called? The tree, like a silent witness, connects the woman in the foreground to the infinite depths of the natural world. In a way, artists are always responding to one another, building upon each other's insights and experimenting with new ways of seeing. And for me, that's the magic of painting, or photography, or any form of art.