Plage De Sebald 2 2019

Elina Brotherus took this photograph, Plage De Sebald 2, and it strikes me as having a painterly kind of process, a laying down of tones and composition. It's like the artist is thinking through her looking. The diptych form divides the scene into two distinct, yet connected spaces. On the left, a dynamic clash of rock, sea, and sky; on the right, a figure in the landscape becomes a small, dark note against the towering forms. I like how that figure seems so deep in thought, how the eye is led away from the ocean and over to her. She seems so small, yet stands against such large forms. Brotherus reminds me a little of painters like Gerhard Richter, in how she embraces photography’s capacity for both documentation and abstraction. It's not about capturing reality as it is, but about exploring how we perceive and relate to the world around us. A conversation, not a dictation.