Rotslandschap in de bergen before 1903

Alfred Enke’s ‘Rotslandschap in de bergen’ is a photograph, a small image, printed in a book. Look at the textures here, the way the dark trees press against the light sky, and the jagged rocks give way to soft foliage. Enke doesn't shy away from the tonal range, from the near black of the tree trunks to the pure white of the sky, all those shades of grey in between, it’s like he's feeling his way through a landscape of light and shadow, embracing the material qualities of photography itself. The way he captures those trees, they are like the punctuation marks in a visual poem, anchoring the composition and guiding our eye through the scene. It reminds me of early modernist photography, maybe someone like Alfred Stieglitz. The picture seems to ask, what is photography really capable of? It’s a conversation, a dialogue with the landscape and with the history of art itself.