Rijstvelden bij de Goentoer, nabij Garoet, Nederlands-Indië c. 1895 - 1915

Onnes Kurkdjian captured rice fields near Garoet, in the Dutch East Indies, sometime between 1851 and 1903. I think of Kurkdjian with his camera, trying to make something of what he’s seeing. The scene is neatly divided into bands, like stacked canvases. A landscape painter does something similar, but the chemical process of photography is very different from the application of oils. I wonder what the rice fields felt like to him? Maybe he was drawn to the way the light filters through the clouds, casting shadows on the mountains in the background, and how the scene in front of him reflected his mood, as well as his surroundings. Landscape painters like the Impressionists or the Hudson River School were doing similar things. They each had an individual perspective of the world that they filtered through their materials. Photography and painting, both allow us to see the world through another's eyes.