Gezicht op een sawah 1900 - 1935

This is a stereoscopic photograph by Neville Keasberry, of what seems to be rice fields, somewhere in Java. I find the way the image is constructed really intriguing, the repeated parallel lines of the paddies creating a kind of rhythm. The monochromatic palette – or maybe it’s just the way the photograph has aged – gives it a timeless quality, like a memory half-faded. Look at how the texture of the earth is rendered, almost tactile, versus the smooth reflective surface of the water. The way the light catches the water’s surface is really something else. It reminds me a bit of some of the landscape photography of the 19th century, like Carleton Watkins, who was working around the same time, though in a totally different place. I guess what both artists have in common is how they use photography to capture the sublime, in the vastness of nature and the human relationship to it.