Gezicht op Jeruzalem before 1905

This is a reproduction of Maxime Du Camp’s “Gezicht op Jeruzalem,” which, if I’m reading this right, was made sometime in the mid-19th century. Isn’t it interesting how photographs, like paintings, can conjure a way of seeing, a way of thinking? The details here are really something – these tiny tonal gradations create a sense of depth and texture, the way the light filters through the ancient stone structures. The composition, too, feels so deliberate, almost painterly. There's a push and pull of tones throughout the image. I'm really drawn to the area in the upper right corner, where the negative space around a ruin creates this tension with the solid forms below. It’s like a conversation between presence and absence, between what’s there and what’s been lost. Thinking about the work of someone like Bernd and Hilla Becher, who methodically documented industrial structures, I see a similar impulse to record and categorize the world around us. Only in the Bechers work it's colder, more distant. Whereas here Du Camp really engages the viewer through the play of light. Both approaches leave room for interpretation, for questioning what we see and how we see it.