Doorgang door het woud 1903 - 1910

Hendrik Doijer made this small photograph, "Doorgang door het woud," maybe with a simple camera and a lot of patience. It’s all about greys, a silvery, dreamy kind of light. You know, looking at this, I think about how making art is always about finding a path. Doijer found a literal path in the woods, but it’s also a metaphor, right? The way the light hits those leaves, it’s almost like he painted it. The texture is so rich. You can almost feel the dampness of the leaves. I keep coming back to the way the path disappears into the distance. It's like a question mark, a way into the unknown. It reminds me a bit of Caspar David Friedrich, that romantic idea of wandering into nature to find yourself. But here, there’s also something about the everyday, the smallness of the human in this huge, tangled world. It's a reminder that art, like life, is often about finding your way through the woods, one step at a time.