Landschap Le Chaos in de Auvergne 1902

This photograph, "Landschap Le Chaos in de Auvergne," by Delizy, captures a chaotic landscape, a dense thicket of earthy tones. I imagine Delizy out there, camera in hand, trying to make sense of this jumble. It feels like he’s wrestling with the scene, trying to find order in the chaos, a solid shape to build the composition around. The light is soft, almost hazy, which flattens the space and turns the rocks and trees into a tapestry of textures. There is a push-pull kind of thing happening here, as the eye tries to make sense of the forms. What I love about landscape is that it's never really about the thing "out there," but about how we relate to it. And how we see, is also about touch. In painting, that can really come to life, you know? This photograph is like a painterly sketch. He is composing and arranging and ultimately trying to wrangle something wild and uncontrollable.