Kamer in landhuis De Wildbaan, Driebergen 1903 - 1907

Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht made this photograph of a room in a country house, sometime before 1912. It's a packed interior, a real cabinet of curiosities, captured in shades of gray. What strikes me is the texture - not just of the objects, but of the photograph itself. You can almost feel the grain of the paper, the way the light catches on its surface. It’s a tactile experience, even though it's a visual one. Look at the way the light falls across the deer heads mounted on the wall, or the spines of the books crammed onto the shelves. Each object seems to have its own story to tell, a little echo of lives lived and memories made. It reminds me of the way Gerhard Richter uses photography as a starting point for his paintings, blurring the lines between representation and abstraction. Both artists seem interested in how we perceive reality through a lens, whether it's photographic or painterly. It's like they're saying, "Here's a picture, but what does it really mean to see?"