Spoor langs suikerriet c. 1900s - 1910s

This small black and white photograph captures a track running alongside a sugarcane field. Imagine the person who took this shot, setting up their camera, framing the scene, maybe having to wait for the right light, working with the technology of the time. This image feels strangely contemporary to me. I’m thinking of people like Lewis Baltz or the New Topographics movement in the 70s who photographed suburban and industrial landscapes. They made banal scenes feel quietly ominous, highlighting the weirdness of the everyday. In a way this photograph anticipates that. It’s so understated but there’s something unsettling about it too. It makes me think about how history repeats itself and how artists are always in conversation with each other, even across time and different mediums. It is, like all artworks, open to multiple interpretations.