Ploughing Team 1907

James Craig Annan made this photogravure, called Ploughing Team, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Look closely at the tonal range, how Annan coaxes so many shades from what is, essentially, a monochrome palette. It's like he's painting with light. I’m struck by the softness, the way the light filters through the trees and dapples the backs of the oxen. It’s a bucolic scene, and I think it’s important to note how the artist frames this rural labor, the work of both man and beast, as something gentle, almost romantic. Notice the way the background fades into a soft blur, a hazy suggestion of the world beyond. It’s like a dream, a memory of a simpler time. This reminds me of Peter Henry Emerson, another photographer who sought to capture the beauty of the English countryside. Both artists, in their own way, were trying to create something timeless, something that would endure long after the world they knew had vanished.