Paifang te Peking before 1920

This silvery photograph of Peking’s decorative archways comes to us from the hand and eye of Donald Mennie. I see the photographer, a foreigner maybe, setting up his equipment on a bustling street. Imagine the patience it would take to capture this scene, framing the shot just so, waiting for the light to be right, with all the sensory chaos of daily life swirling around. The tonal range feels compressed, but the details are sharp, like the intricate carvings on the archway. It must have been so new to Mennie. Photography, like painting, asks us to really look, to meditate on a single moment extracted from the stream of time. Mennie’s images feel like love letters to a place and time now passed, reminding us of the power of images to freeze moments into our collective memory. Artists build on each other’s visions across time, and this photo is a reminder of how we keep seeing, searching, and reimagining.