Boeren aan het werk op een rijstveld, op de achtergrond de bergen van Sumatra c. 1900 - 1920

This photograph, showing labourers in a landscape, was made by Christiaan Benjamin Nieuwenhuis at an unknown date, but probably near the end of the 19th century. Look at how the monochromatic palette gives the workers an anonymous quality, like automatons tending to the land. The figures are sunk into the rice paddy, their reflections shimmering in the waterlogged ground. These repeated shapes, these tiny gestures made to work the land, remind me of brushstrokes. The mountain looms in the background, as indifferent to the labourers as the sky is to the earth. The scale of the landscape dwarfs the human forms, suggesting how insignificant we are in the face of nature's grandeur. I’m reminded of some of Gustave Courbet’s landscapes, and how he used the human figure to draw attention to the awesome power of nature. Both artists manage to find beauty in simplicity, making the ordinary seem extraordinary.