Landschap, met bergen op de achtergrond before 1903

Editor: We’re looking at a print of a photograph called "Landschap, met bergen op de achtergrond," or Landscape, with mountains in the background, by Alfred Horsley Hinton, sometime before 1903. The mountains in the distance look pretty dreamy but the foreground is a little more wild, and the whole piece has this really still, almost melancholic mood. What do you make of it? Curator: That melancholic mood, it echoes something deep inside, doesn't it? It makes me think about that hazy place in memory where the mountains of the past loom over the present. The choice of Pictorialism here suggests a real embrace of artistic manipulation. You almost feel like you’re not quite sure where reality ends and feeling begins, right? Almost like a beautiful, but slightly distorted, dream. What strikes you about its visual elements? Editor: I like that description of reality meeting feeling. For me, I notice how the darker foreground kind of pushes the mountain range further into the background. They almost feel like they're fading away. Curator: Fading away, exactly! Hinton is whispering secrets about the passage of time here, I think. About memory… but he’s doing it with clouds and mountains, no less! So… tell me, when you look at this piece, what does *time* feel like? Editor: Hmm. That’s a big question! I guess… elusive? Fleeting? Like trying to catch smoke, almost? Curator: Smoke, yes! Hinton seems to say that it’s in those fleeting moments – the hazy recollections and personal interpretations – that we truly find ourselves reflected in the landscape, don't you think? Editor: Yeah, I think so. It's less about what’s actually *there*, and more about what it makes you feel. Curator: Exactly, my friend. Exactly.