Maria Gonggrijp met gezelschap in een nederzetting in Suriname c. 1910

Justus Gonggrijp made this photograph, Maria Gonggrijp met gezelschap in een nederzetting in Suriname, and though the date's unknown, the sepia tones and the subjects’ garb are very much of their time. This process of making images, of making art, is a funny thing: it’s all about decisions. Look at the light here. It’s not even—it’s got a funny way of hitting all these different subjects, and you know that means that the artist was at the mercy of what was in front of him and also what the technology could do. The texture of the roof, or the way that straw hangs, really stands out for me. It's not really what we’re supposed to be looking at, but that to me is a part of the story. You get the feeling that Gonggrijp wasn’t trying to hide the process. It's all there, the light and shadow, the subjects are all arranged in a way that feels like it was directed, but it's all just there. Someone like John Thomson comes to mind, who was working with photography around the same time, but was going to different places to capture images of different people. But that's how it is with art; everyone's talking, but no one's saying the same thing.