Exterieur van een woningen voor werknemers van suikerfabriek Goedo te Djombang op Java c. 1925 - 1930

This photograph by Isken shows the exterior of housing for workers at the Goedo sugar factory in Djombang, Java. What strikes me is the rendering of light, how it dances on the road, creating a complex pattern of light and dark that flattens the space. It’s almost like a deliberate obscuring of the image, like an abstract painting. Look at the long wall that stretches across the image’s center, a scalloped rhythm of light and shadow. The light makes the surface of the wall appear almost liquid. It undulates, like a deliberate blurring of the distinction between the concrete, fixed, architectural space and the organic, fluid, natural world. This image reminds me of Gerhard Richter, whose blurred photographs explore the ambiguous boundary between abstraction and figuration. Isken, like Richter, invites us to see the world not as a fixed reality, but as a constantly shifting field of perception.