Stelviopas bij de Weisser Knott 1895 - 1910

This photograph, Stelviopas bij de Weisser Knott, captures a mountain scene, and it's by an anonymous photographer. The composition feels almost sculptural. I’m drawn to the way the artist worked with light and shadow to create depth, that tonal range is everything. The contrast is really working for me in how it defines the forms. Look at how the buildings nestle in the landscape, dwarfed by the scale of the mountains. See those sweeping lines of the glacier, echoing the jagged peaks above. The way the greys blend and bleed, it makes me think about how photography is all about transformation; how what's there becomes something else through the lens. It brings to mind Bernd and Hilla Becher, with their systematic approach to cataloguing industrial structures. But where the Bechers are all about objectivity, this photograph has a romantic, almost painterly quality. It reminds us that even in the most documentary of mediums, there's always room for interpretation, for feeling, for art.