Gezicht op het Senegalese paviljoen en het panorama van de Wereldtentoonstelling van 1905 in Luik 1905

This anonymous photograph captures the Senegalese pavilion at the World Exhibition in Liège, 1905. The limited tonal range, moving between the white of the page and the deepest grey of the distant treeline, places this piece in dialogue with the monochrome works of Gerhard Richter. The surface quality is fascinating; the image feels almost like a charcoal rubbing, a transfer of something else, with the texture of the paper stock asserting itself throughout. There's a tension between the objective distance of the architectural structures and the human scale of the people dotted throughout the fairground. I keep being drawn back to the strange striped gate, the repetition creating a visual rhythm that seems to pulse across the image. The slightly mournful tone reminds me of Eugène Atget’s photographs of Paris, both using the camera to document the urban landscape as a space of transient encounter. This is not to suggest a direct influence, but rather to highlight how artists across time engage in a collective conversation, riffing off each other’s ideas and approaches.