Huis op plantage Johanna Catharina te Suriname c. 1918

Theodoor Brouwers made this photograph of a house on the Johanna Catharina plantation in Suriname sometime in his lifetime between 1875 and 1932. Look at the way the sepia tones wash over the architectural details, softening the edges of the buildings and blending them into the landscape. I imagine Brouwers carefully composing this shot. He’s aligning the buildings just so, trying to capture the essence of this place, this plantation home, and I can almost feel the stillness he must have felt as he looked through the lens. The light is probably intense, and the air thick with humidity. What does it feel like to be an artist making work during this time? The composition is stable with the house in the background and smaller construction in the foreground. A bridge crosses a stream, which is a nice human touch in all this landscape. I wonder what life was like here? How would it feel to walk across that bridge every day? These are the questions that keep artists in conversation across time, thinking, looking, and inspiring each other.