Sluis in kanaal c. 1900s - 1910s

This small photograph, Sluis in kanaal, presents a lock in a canal, and right away you can see the artist is thinking about depth, how the light fades as it hits the trees in the background. The tone is quite subdued, almost melancholic. Look closely, and you'll notice how the texture of the stone contrasts with the smoothness of the water. There’s a beautiful tension here between the artificial and the natural, almost like a black and white de Chirico. It reminds me a little of some of Gerhard Richter’s photo paintings, where he also takes images as source material. What interests me in both of them is that sense of using a photograph as a jumping off point to try to understand the world a little better. Art isn’t about answers; it’s about the questions we ask.