Boerderij in Fyllo, Thessalië before 1910

This is Frédéric Boissonnas’s photograph of a farm in Fyllo, Thessaly, printed in an unknown year. The sepia tones feel gentle, like a memory half-faded, half-preserved. Look at the texture, how the paper and ink create a surface that’s both smooth and subtly grainy. It reminds me that every image, every artwork, is made of physical stuff. Even a photograph, which we think of as capturing reality, is really just a layer of particles clinging to a surface. In the image, the cartwheels stand out. The way they're captured feels like the beginnings of modernism. Those wheels could be an early Duchamp readymade! It’s as though Boissonnas is saying, "Here’s a tool, a machine, a slice of real life, and it’s art because I say so." This brings to mind Atget, who documented the streets of Paris at the same time. Both feel very connected to the world, like documents of a very specific moment. They remind us that art is always a conversation between the artist, the world, and the materials at hand.