Nest met eieren van een kraai c. 1900 - 1930

Richard Tepe made this photograph, ‘Nest met eieren van een kraai’, sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, using a process with lots of sepia tones. It’s funny, when you look at a picture of a nest, you're really looking at a sculpture, and the materials! The twigs, grasses, and mud – it’s all about texture and form. I love the way the light hits this tangle of branches, making a kind of screen around the more regular circular form of the nest. It gives the whole image this feeling of depth, of burrowing down, into the thicket. Your eye jumps from the prickly exterior to the soft interior, where the three oval eggs sit, like small smooth stones. Thinking about it, Tepe's photograph reminds me a little of the nests Joseph Cornell created in his boxes. They’re both about finding a space for the fragile things in life. This photograph, like Cornell’s boxes, captures a moment of quiet anticipation, where nothing is resolved.