Knotberk in een weiland 1900 - 1930

Richard Tepe made this photograph, "Knotberk in een weiland," sometime in his life with a camera and some photographic paper. Isn’t it funny how photographs can be paintings and paintings can be photographs, sometimes? I mean, look at this tonal range! It’s so subdued, like a Morandi still life, but spread out across a landscape. Tepe's really got a knack for turning light into something almost touchable. Take the trunk of that tree in the foreground. It's got this incredible texture, this kind of grainy, mottled surface that's so different from the smooth, almost velvety sky. It’s like he’s trying to capture not just what a tree looks like, but what it *feels* like to run your hand along its bark. It's also very grounded, compared to the ethereal quality of the trees that line the horizon in the background. Looking at this, I can't help but think of Peter Henry Emerson, another photographer who was trying to capture the English countryside in a similar way. Maybe Tepe was trying to join that conversation, but with a distinctly Dutch accent.