Tuin van het huis Kersbergen, Zeist 1914

Lambertus Hendrik van Berk made this photograph of the garden of the house Kersbergen, in Zeist. It feels almost like a painting with light; an outdoor impression caught in a moment. There is an interesting flatness to the image. You can feel the texture of the many different plants and flowers – the tall grasses, and the dark glossy leaves. The colors are dark too, heavy like oil paint, and this helps compress the depth of the picture. It makes it feel like the photograph is also a physical object. It reminds me of the flattened perspective in some of the early landscape paintings, a kind of ‘tapestry’ effect. What really stands out is the path. It cuts through everything, like a knife. You can imagine walking down it, into the dark trees at the end. All the plants seem to be trying to come into the path, reclaiming it somehow. It’s like van Berk is asking us if we would dare to step into this space. The path is a threshold. This reminds me of other landscape artists like, perhaps, Piet Oudolf, who understood gardens not as decorations but as living, breathing things.