Piz Popena in het Cristallomassief c. 1889 - 1920

This small, anonymous photo in the Rijksmuseum pictures the Piz Popena mountain. It’s got that slightly faded look, with the sepia tones and hints of pale blue sky. I wonder about the person who took this shot, setting up their equipment in what must have been freezing conditions. Did they trudge all the way up there? There's something about the rough texture of the mountain, the way the light catches the snow. They give the piece a real sense of weight, of natural forms carved by time. It feels like a memory, a postcard from a lost world. You can imagine the crisp air, the silence broken only by the wind. This piece sits in a tradition of artists trying to capture these massive geological phenomena. Turner comes to mind. Maybe it's the scale, or the way it conveys a sense of nature's awesome power. These artists were all trying to understand nature. A record of how they saw and felt. Isn't that what we're all trying to do?