Passagiers op een zeilschip tijdens een tochtje op het Sneeker meer. c. 1903

Frits Freerks Fontein Fz. made this photo of passengers on a sailboat on the Sneeker Lake, and the first thing I notice is how they are all looking in different directions! I wonder what Frits Freerks Fontein Fz. was thinking, maybe he’d asked them all to look somewhere specific, or were they naturally distracted by different things? Maybe the guy on the left is just really into sails, which can be mesmerizing, or the sailor is just really into his pipe. Even though this is not a painting, the composition really interests me: you can see that the artist has arranged the subjects so they are all visible, which brings out the odd intimacy of strangers on a boat. There’s a great sense of an artist figuring things out that I can relate to! It’s like, as artists, we’re all in a conversation, borrowing and expanding on each other's ideas. We’re always pushing the boundaries of seeing.