Landschap before 1903

Edouard Adelot's photograph, *Landschap*, maybe from around the turn of the century, shows what I imagine is a wooded landscape printed in muted tones on the page of a book. The sky looks ominous. I’m thinking about what it might have been like for Adelot to take this picture. I imagine him as a lone figure in a dense forest, patiently waiting for the perfect moment to capture the interplay of light and shadow. Maybe he adjusted the camera settings, experimenting with different exposures to convey the starkness of the scene. There is a way in which the tonal range is narrow and also very nuanced. Did he use special filters or lenses? There is a quiet intensity in *Landschap*, a sense of foreboding. I think it relates to the wider photographic movement of the time, where artists sought to capture the beauty and mystery of the natural world through a softened lens. We can see artists engaging in an ongoing conversation, inspiring and influencing each other's creative processes, and maybe learning from their mistakes. It’s a kind of embodied expression, a way of embracing uncertainty and ambiguity, letting go of fixed meanings, and embracing multiple interpretations.