Tibetan Ploughwoman Possibly 1960 - 2021

This is a photograph by Niu Weiyu of a Tibetan Ploughwoman. There's so much to see here, isn't there? It's a beautiful shot, but for me it’s also about labor, and the weight of the earth. I can imagine Niu Weiyu setting up the shot, thinking about how to frame the woman and her plough against the vast landscape. He must have been thinking of the back-breaking work this must have been for the woman. It's there in her muscles, the plough is there, in the field. I wonder what sort of conversation they had. Maybe he'd be thinking about those other artists, who are always trying to capture something essential about the human experience. Maybe someone like Dorothea Lange comes to mind. I bet he was hoping to add something to that conversation too. That’s what art is, isn't it? Just people talking to each other across time. We see what someone else did, and we can see what we want to do.