Een tocht met rijtuigen en paarden door een glooiend dal, vermoedelijk in de Harz c. 1903 - 1908

Geldolph Adriaan Kessler took this photograph, Een tocht met rijtuigen en paarden door een glooiend dal, vermoedelijk in de Harz, sometime in the first half of the 20th century. The sepia tone gives it a timeless quality, like a memory fading at the edges. What strikes me is the texture, or lack thereof. Everything's smoothed out, softened, from the rolling hills to the road winding through the valley. You can almost feel the quiet of the scene, the stillness of the air. Look at the way the light filters through the trees, creating these hazy, dreamlike shadows. It's as if the whole landscape is holding its breath. It reminds me of some of Gerhard Richter’s blurred photographs, that same sense of longing and nostalgia. Both artists seem to be exploring the ways that memory and experience get filtered and distorted over time, leaving us with these haunting, half-remembered images. It makes you wonder, what is it that we really see when we look at a photograph?