Gezicht op de Grand Coulee Dam, Columbia River, Verenigde Staten 1936

Wouter Cool's photograph of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River is a study in the monochrome – it looks like it might have been made with ink. The eye drifts over it like a river itself, slowly charting the scene. I wonder about Cool and how they felt as they were framing this shot. They would have been there, amidst all this industry, making their own kind of mark. Did they have any sense of the scale of it all? I mean, look at that detail! It's almost topographical, like a map. You can see the textures of the buildings, the movement in the river, and the distant hills. Photography and painting are in constant conversation with one another. As painters, we try to evoke light, space, and form, but photography captures it instantly. But what photography can't capture is the slow accretion of marks and adjustments, the trial and error that goes into making art. Cool's photograph is not neutral or objective but a record of a particular sensibility and a meditation on the landscape, labor, and progress.