Kust bij mijn 32 1900 - 1922

Robert Julius Boers made this photograph, "Kust bij mijn 32," sometime around 1899, and he probably took it with a bulky view camera. Look at the way the sepia tone softens the scene, almost like a watercolor painting. It’s a testament to photography’s ability to capture a fleeting moment, but also to transform it into something timeless. The texture here is subtle but powerful, the sand almost looks like it's been stippled with a brush. The light is evenly distributed, yet it creates depth, drawing us into the scene. I’m particularly drawn to the rocks that pepper the beach, like dark punctuation marks in a sentence. Boers seems to be speaking to the silence and solitude of nature, much like Caspar David Friedrich did in his landscapes. It's a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation, each piece building on what came before, and opening doors to new ways of seeing.