Brownsweg 1903 - 1910

Hendrik Doijer made this small photo called Brownsweg, probably when he was knocking around in Suriname. I'm picturing him, probably sweating a bit, trying to capture the way the path snakes into the bush. It’s all subdued tones, like a memory fading, but I can see him wanting to show how nature just swallows everything up. The way the light flares at the end of the path is like, what's really there? What's he searching for? Think about other artists who got pulled into nature, like they wanted to become part of it. I'm thinking of artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, or Agnes Martin, maybe. Doijer is maybe trying to do the same, but with a camera instead of a brush. Art-making is just one big conversation, right? Artists riffing off each other, seeing something new, seeing something old in a new way. This photo, it's like he’s whispering something about the world, and maybe about himself, and we're just leaning in to listen.