Straat met palmen 1925 - 1935

Theodoor Brouwers captured this street with palms in a photograph, sometime between 1875 and 1932. The image is held in a black page, bordered with red, and affixed with small pieces of tape at each corner. It makes me think about the act of preservation and how we try to hold onto moments, like pinning down a butterfly. I wonder what Brouwers was thinking when he took this picture. Was he struck by the way the light filtered through the palm leaves, or was it the quiet stillness of the street that caught his eye? You can almost feel the heat radiating off the pavement, the air thick with humidity. There’s a quiet elegance to this scene, a sense of timelessness that transcends the limitations of the photographic medium. Brouwers invites us to pause, to breathe in the atmosphere, and to contemplate the beauty of the everyday. And isn't that what all us image makers are trying to do, in one form or another?