Gezicht op een kerk te Aalst 1904

This photographic print of a church in Aalst, captured by an anonymous hand, presents a world in sepia tones, a reminder of time's passage. The way the light falls, almost uniformly, hints at a process of careful documentation. It reminds me that every mark, in photography or painting, is a decision, a little negotiation with the world. There’s a stillness to this image, a kind of quietude that I find really appealing. It is, in a way, a form of abstraction. If you zoom in on the hedge, you notice how the leaves are captured as individual dots and dashes. There is something painterly about the granularity of the image. You can almost imagine it as an Impressionist landscape, translated into the language of early photography. Just as painters borrow from each other, so too do photographers learn from the history of painting, constantly echoing and responding to the past. This church, captured in light and shadow, feels like a conversation across time, a reminder that art is always an ongoing process.