Berkenbomen langs een weg before 1903

Max Lorenz’s photograph, Berkenbomen langs een weg, or Birch Trees Along a Road, is a black and white image included in a larger volume. The image itself conveys an orderly road moving through a forest of birch trees, and we might consider it as a work of German Romanticism, if not for its inclusion in a book that seems to be of a scientific character. The fact that it is reproduced in a book, and the book itself is concerned with chemical development, speaks to the changing status of images in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Germany at this time, a formalist turn in art history coincided with an explosion of new image technologies. The photograph presented here becomes an example of those technologies but also becomes a record of a social space, a park or a carefully organized forest. To better understand this image, one must look at the history of photography, or forestry, or even the publishing industry. Art can be understood through the social and institutional contexts that give it meaning.