Bacovenboot 1903 - 1910

Hendrik Doijer made this black and white photograph of the Bacovenboot sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Look at that calm water, you can almost feel the stillness of the moment. You can imagine Doijer, setting up his camera, trying to capture the hugeness of the boat against the landscape. The Bacovenboot sits there, a big, quiet object, both solid and floating. What was Doijer thinking? He might have wanted to capture the sheer scale of human ingenuity, that we can make these huge things that move across the water. Maybe it made him wonder about the journeys taken by the ship, the lives it touched, the stories it could tell. Photography, like painting, invites us to look closely, to feel deeply, and to connect with the world in new ways. It's a way of seeing and experiencing that is always open to interpretation, just like all good art.