Plantage Accaribo 1913 - 1930

Theodoor Brouwers made this tiny photograph, titled Plantage Accaribo, sometime between 1875 and 1932. Look how the images are presented side-by-side. I wonder if Brouwers was thinking about depth? Or perhaps, when looking at the world with two eyes, we are always seeing double. Each eye with its unique, slightly shifted view. I am fascinated by how artists look at the world and then, through some kind of alchemy, turn it into something else. This scene shows a group of figures in a dense landscape; it is both revealing and obscured, a bit like memory itself. There is an intimacy to it, a certain kind of relationship. It reminds me of the work of other painters who experimented with light and atmosphere like James McNeil Whistler. I bet Brouwers would have known his work, and perhaps felt compelled to respond to it, to advance the conversation.