Gezicht op het Oosterse paviljoen van de Wereldtentoonstelling van 1905 in Luik 1905

This photograph captures the Oosterse Pavilion at the 1905 World Exhibition in Liège. Look at how the sharp focus renders every ornamental detail, each little turret and flag and how the light delicately etches their forms. It's almost obsessive. In terms of texture, this isn't about brushstrokes or the artist's hand, but rather the crisp, almost clinical rendering of a structure built to represent "the Orient." It reminds me a bit of Hilma af Klint's diagrammatic paintings, or even some of the precise detail you see in Ernst Haeckel’s illustrations, where there’s a desire to map and categorise, a kind of encyclopedic impulse. The way this pavilion is framed, almost floating against its background, gives it this uncanny aura. It's like a stage set, promising some kind of exotic experience, but ultimately it’s a fantasy, a Western projection of otherness. As viewers, we are left to question what we are really seeing when we look at images of other cultures. It invites us to consider the politics of display and representation.