Stoepa's bij een tempel te Peking before 1920

Donald Mennie made this photograph of a stupa by a temple in Peking sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. It's interesting how Mennie frames the temple with the trees, creating a kind of natural proscenium. The sepia tone gives the image a timeless quality, almost like a memory fading into the past. Look at the paving stones leading up to the temple. They're not perfectly aligned, and there's a subtle, almost imperceptible shift in perspective, which makes the whole scene feel alive. There's a person standing in the shadows, but they are partially obscured. They seem to be a silent observer, a witness to the passage of time. Mennie's work reminds me a bit of Eugène Atget, who documented the streets of Paris with a similar sense of quiet observation. It’s this sense of stillness that really gets me. Art is a conversation across time.