Familie Brouwers drinkt thee op de plantage Accaribo, Suriname 1916

This is a photograph of the Brouwers family drinking tea at the Accaribo plantation in Suriname. There’s a lightness of touch here in the rendering of the scene, a world captured, perhaps on a whim. I can imagine the photographer, wrestling with the constraints of the medium, trying to hold onto a feeling, a memory. What were they thinking when they pressed the shutter? Did they feel like they were creating a window into the soul of this family? Or just documenting another day at the plantation. Look how the light falls on the children’s faces, innocent and full of curiosity. You can almost hear the clinking of the tea cups and smell the earth after a tropical rain shower. It reminds me of other family portraits where people are gathered together in one place but are all completely unaware of each other. It’s fascinating how artists through time, with painting and with photography, have been constantly looking to others for creative fuel, riffing off one another’s ideas to produce something entirely new.