Kasteel aan een water in een bosrijke omgeving c. 1905 - 1907

Folkert Idzes de Jong made this photograph of a castle in a watery, wooded landscape sometime between 1877 and 1929. I love how the still water mirrors the building and the overhanging trees, as if the castle is doubled, or even melting into itself. I imagine de Jong setting up his camera, carefully framing this image, thinking about light and reflection. Photography, like painting, is all about surfaces, so the way light lands is everything. It must have been so different then from now when we snap away without thinking. I wonder what the castle was like inside? Who lived there? Did they see themselves reflected in the water as they looked out the windows? Maybe de Jong was wondering the same things as he took this. Photography opens a space of imagination, doesn't it? It freezes a moment in time and lets our minds wander.