Pilaar van het Viaduct de Rouzat over de Allier in de Auvergne 1904

This small photograph, "Pilaar van het Viaduct de Rouzat over de Allier in de Auvergne", probably made with a camera, captures a moment in the ongoing conversation between nature and construction. There's this interplay of light and shadow, a kind of dance happening on the surface of the water, with soft gradients of brown and gray. See how the water reflects the sky and the trees, blurring the boundary between the solid and the liquid, the real and the reflected. It feels like the process of seeing itself is being laid bare, layer by layer. My eye keeps getting drawn to the the viaduct which rises up from the river bank. It's almost as if it's reaching for something beyond the frame. Think about how the photograph manages to hold all these elements together: the organic forms of the landscape and the industrial lines of the viaduct. This recalls the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, who also looked for the poetics in industrial architecture. Art is an ongoing conversation and this piece asks us to think about how we see the world.