Rokende vulkaan met puin op de voorgrond in Nederlands-Indië 1912

Onnes Kurkdjian made this photograph of a smoking volcano in the Dutch East Indies. It's really fascinating to me, how the camera captured this explosion of smoke, this powerful geological event. The dark, grainy texture of the rocks in the foreground really adds to the drama. I wonder what Kurkdjian was thinking when he made this image, standing there in the face of such a primal force. It's a totally different mindset from painting, right? Here, the photographer is just trying to capture something already happening. And the volcano, of course, doesn't care. It's like Kurkdjian is in dialogue with nature itself. It reminds me of some of Vesuvius photographs, of course. There’s a whole genre that takes a disaster to be awesome. Anyway, I’m always thinking about how painters and photographers build on each other's ideas across time, inspiring each other's creative work.