Waterlelies bij Shewasaulu, Zuid-Afrika 1968

This photo of waterlilies near Shewasaulu in South Africa was taken by Willem Jacob van den Berg. I can imagine van den Berg carefully framing this shot, maybe squatting down to get the perfect angle, trying to capture the light on the water. There’s such stillness in this image, a quiet observation of nature's beauty. The reflections are so subtle, they look like brushstrokes, like a watercolor painting. It makes me think about other artists who’ve been drawn to waterlilies, like Monet, of course, but also lesser-known artists. I wonder if he was thinking about them too? About how to capture the fleeting beauty of nature, how to translate a three-dimensional scene onto a flat surface. Photography, just like painting, is a way of seeing, a way of thinking about the world, and a way of feeling it. It’s this ongoing exchange of ideas that makes art so exciting, this conversation across time and place.