Gezicht op Peking before 1920

Donald Mennie's 'Gezicht op Peking' is an intriguing photograph of a landscape, presented as a process of seeing. The sepia tones lend the image a nostalgic feel, almost like a half-remembered dream. I'm drawn to the way the light filters through the trees, creating a soft, almost blurred effect, as if the scene is constantly shifting, like our memory. The composition is split between a sparse foreground and dense background, that makes the work feel both intimate and expansive, and these qualities invite you to get lost in its details. Look at the bare branches reaching up, almost like tentative brushstrokes against the sky! There’s an openness here; art is about conversations, and the best ones are full of questions and different viewpoints.