Wilhelm en Frieda Wesenhagen op de veranda 1905 - 1910

Jacob Evert Wesenhagen made this photograph of Wilhelm and Frieda Wesenhagen on the Veranda, sometime around 1900, probably in Suriname. It’s got that sepia tone, giving it a dreamy, nostalgic feel. The surface is paper, thin and aged. It’s a straight-up documentary image, nothing fancy, but look closer – you can see the photographer's presence in the choice of framing, the focus on the architecture, the light. It reminds me that even in the most straightforward images, the artist's hand is always there, shaping what we see and how we see it. I’m drawn to the soft blurring of the foliage, how it contrasts with the architectural elements in the background. This tension between clarity and blur, control and chance, is something I think about a lot in my own work. It's like a conversation between intention and accident, and it’s where the real juice is, right? Look at artists like Gerhard Richter, with his blurred, scraped surfaces, or even Corot, the way he softened the edges of things. It’s all about finding the beauty in the in-between, the messy, imperfect parts of life.