Gezicht op bomen rondom een water before 1909

This mysterious photograph by Coppin-Goisse, titled ‘Gezicht op bomen rondom een water’, pulls you into a dream-like space. The blue-toned image is mounted on card, like a specimen in a display case. There’s something about the way the sunlight is captured here that I find interesting. It’s not just light, it’s like a solid object, a kind of glow, maybe the artist was interested in light as a material. The silvery texture of the image is compelling, it makes you want to reach out and touch the surface, to feel the grain of the photograph. It's so hard to know what the process was, did they obscure or reveal the image? Looking at this work I am reminded of the way Gerhard Richter used photography as the starting point for his paintings, both artists are interested in the play of light and shadow. Both artists show how the world around us is not fixed but is always shifting, full of ambiguity.