Mannen bij een waterwerk bij suikerfabriek Ngandjoek op Java c. 1925 - 1930

This sepia photograph shows men at a waterworks near the Ngandjoek sugar factory on Java, and right away, I'm thinking about process, not just in the creation of the image, but in the sugar-making, too. Look how the light falls, almost uniformly, across the scene. It has an eerie, dream-like quality. The tones are so muted and consistent. You could get lost in the variations of brown and grey, like a memory fading at the edges. The water itself is so still, reflecting the sky like a mirror. But then your eye snags on the small cascade, a frothy, white eruption in this otherwise still scene. It's funny, it reminds me of some of Gerhard Richter's landscapes, that same sense of melancholic stillness. Ultimately, it’s not so much about what's depicted, but about how photography itself constructs our way of seeing. It's more of a conversation, always in process.