Velden behorend bij de Raeburn en Spottiswoode Estates in Singapore before 1905

"Velden behorend bij de Raeburn en Spottiswoode Estates in Singapore" was made by G.R. Lambert & Co. employing a photographic process that renders the landscape in muted tones. The texture here is intriguing; the image quality gives the impression of a rough, almost tactile surface in the fields, but the reality is that it is a smooth photographic paper. This tension between what we see and what is actually there is echoed in the subject matter of the image. The landscape is presented as ordered and cultivated, yet the eye is drawn to the unevenness of the ground. The composition, split across two frames, reminds me of early photographic experiments. It’s almost as if the artists are saying that capturing reality is an ongoing, imperfect process. This piece puts me in mind of the photographic collages of David Hockney, where multiple perspectives are combined into a single image to create a more complete, but inevitably fragmented, view of reality.