Struik in bloei c. 1900 - 1930

Richard Tepe captured this image of a flowering shrub sometime between 1864 and 1952. It’s a symphony of muted tones, mostly browns, creams, and sepias. It feels like a private moment. I can imagine Tepe, camera in hand, considering how to represent this natural scene. The light filters through the leaves, creating a tapestry of shadows and highlights. What to focus on? The texture of the leaves? The delicate petals of the blossoms? Perhaps he was thinking about how to translate the three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional image, a question that painters grapple with all the time. There’s a softness to the photograph, a gentle blurring of the edges that gives it an almost dreamlike quality, rather like a Whistler nocturne. I find myself looking at the play of light and shadow, the way the camera captures the essence of the scene rather than a precise rendering. It reminds me that art is, at its heart, a conversation across time, each artist building on the work of those who came before.