Gezicht op Johannesburg, gezien vanaf Hospital Hill 1901

This anonymous photograph, titled *Gezicht op Johannesburg, gezien vanaf Hospital Hill*, captures a wide cityscape in pale sepia tones. The buildings are small in the distance, but it’s the foreground that really grabs me. Look at the way the rocks and scrubby bushes are rendered, almost abstract, like simple daubs of paint. The texture is soft and grainy, the color faded, almost dreamlike. You can almost smell the dust and feel the heat radiating off the landscape. My eye is drawn to the strong horizontal lines of the buildings and roads, which contrast so beautifully with the chaotic natural forms in the foreground. This tension gives the piece so much energy, and feels like a perfect visual metaphor for the relationship between humans and the land. Thinking about the broader conversation, this photo reminds me of some of the landscape photography of someone like Carleton Watkins. Both capture the scale and drama of the natural world, but also hint at the human stories embedded in those landscapes.