Gezicht op een rivier met schepen c. 1900 - 1930

Here's a tiny sepia photograph of a river with ships by Richard Tepe, sitting in the Rijksmuseum. The whole thing feels like one big smear, you know? A soft focus, almost like memory itself. I see the ships are just kind of hanging out on the water, barely there, like ghostly apparitions. The sky is a total wash, completely monotone. I wonder what Tepe was thinking when he snapped this? Was he trying to capture a fleeting moment? Was he thinking about atmosphere, about how light can dissolve the world into a haze? It’s got that quiet melancholy, something like Whistler would do. The way the scene blurs suggests a kind of abstraction. Tepe reminds us that perception is always mediated, always a little bit off. We see through a glass, darkly.