Stroomversnelling in een kreek 1905 - 1910

This photograph, "Stroomversnelling in een kreek," captures a creek with a strong current, probably captured with a large format camera by Jacob Evert Wesenhagen. Looking at it, I think about the artist standing there, probably on the riverbank, with a camera, waiting for the right light. The water’s surface is alive with ripples and reflections, each tiny shift creating a new play of light and shadow. You can feel the artist responding, choosing where to focus, what to include. There's a kind of sympathy you develop with the artist – like, I wonder if they were as into that dead tree in the middle of the river? The image is a conversation about capturing a sense of the sublime, but also about stillness and movement. It's a reminder that, like painting, photography is about seeing and feeling and translating that onto a surface. Wesenhagen is reminding us that there is a way that one person's feeling of a place can be made visible to someone else. It’s about that exchange.