Gezicht op een vlakte met op de achtergrond gebouwen en op de voorgrond een aantal mannen in Bloemfontein, Zuid-Afrika 1901

This landscape with figures in Bloemfontein, South Africa, is a photograph – we don’t know who made it, which is a shame in a way, because there’s so much process and human labor revealed. The photograph is sepia toned, which lends it a feeling of distance, a kind of looking back, but there’s also a lot of visual information, and this makes it feel immediate. There's a tension between the objective, documentary quality of photography and the more subjective aspects of composition and viewpoint. Look at the way the figures in the foreground are arranged, each with their own posture, their own relationship to the ground. The photographer has captured the light catching on their clothing and the buildings in the distance. It reminds me a little of the work of early photographers like Gustave Le Gray or Roger Fenton, who were experimenting with capturing landscapes and scenes of everyday life. It shows us that art isn’t about perfect rendering, it is about the conversations and relations between humans.