Gezicht op een water in een landschap before 1902

This landscape view of a waterway was made with a photographic process by Alfred Horsley Hinton. The tonality is so soft, like a memory fading into the past. I’m thinking about what it must have been like to take this photograph. Did he have to wait for the perfect light, the perfect moment when the clouds aligned just so? Did he feel a sense of peace standing by the water, or was he wrestling with the technical challenges of his medium? It’s a quiet scene, but there’s something almost unsettling about the way the trees are reflected in the water, like a mirror image of our own anxieties. I see how Hinton has captured a certain mood, a feeling of melancholy or longing, which connects his practice to many other landscape painters. Artists are always in conversation, learning from each other, riffing on each other’s ideas, so it makes sense. And like any good work of art, this photograph leaves space for ambiguity.