Drolperen bij Shewasaulu, Zuid-Afrika 1968

This double photographic plate by Willem Jacob van den Berg, whose Dutch name translates to “Drolperen bij Shewasaulu, Zuid-Afrika,” meaning something like 'Drool Pears at Shewasaulu, South Africa,' was made sometime around 1968. What strikes me is the pale light, giving everything a kind of washed-out, sun-bleached look. There’s something about the way these images sit on the page with the handwritten notes that lends a feeling of a life lived in nature. The muted tones, the almost naive composition, it all feels very immediate, as though the artist just snapped these images and pasted them into a scrapbook on the same day. I particularly love the way the light catches the foliage, turning the leaves into a pale halo around the trees. It's almost as though he is trying to capture a feeling of something greater than himself. It makes me think of Agnes Martin’s interest in nature, not as something picturesque, but as a field of infinite potential. There is humility and dedication to this kind of mark-making.