Tuin met waterbassin bij hotel Xhar Bagh, Isfahan, Perzië Possibly 1925

A.G.A. van Eelde made this photograph of a garden with a pool at the Xhar Bagh hotel in Isfahan, Persia. It's all about value, right? How light and dark can create depth. Think about photography as a conversation, a call and response between what the eye sees and how the camera records. The texture of the stone in the foreground is really brought forward by the focus, and I keep coming back to the dark reflections in the water – they’re almost like a painting within the photograph. It makes me think about how we perceive space and depth. The darks against the whites of the building beyond make everything seem to vibrate. This feels like a cousin to some of those early modernist photographs, like the ones by Stieglitz. There's a similar interest in the interplay of light and shadow, a real sensitivity to the mood and atmosphere of a place. It's less about capturing a scene and more about evoking a feeling.