Gezicht op een vlakte met op de achtergrond gebouwen en op de voorgrond een aantal mannen in Bloemfontein, Zuid-Afrika 1901

This is a small, anonymous photograph of Bloemfontein in South Africa. What would it have been like to stand there, setting up the shot, waiting for just the right light, for all the elements to align? It is a sepia-toned image. The sky is light. The flat land is dark, scattered with men dressed in tunics, their shapes like dark brushstrokes upon the earth. Buildings sit in the distance like a child’s toy set. I think of other landscape painters like Courbet, and how they made the earth a protagonist of the image. Is there a dialogue here? What does it mean to flatten the composition in this way? What is highlighted, what is lost? It is nice to imagine all the things that remain unseen.