Exterieur van de Hoogduitse Israëlitische synagoge in Paramaribo before 1927

Eugen Klein captured this exterior view of the High German Israelite Synagogue in Paramaribo with photography, a medium I think of as painting with light. I imagine Klein, under the Paramaribo sun, composing this shot. What choices did he make about angle, about light, and about what to include in the frame? The soft gradations of tone, from the bright façade to the shadowed areas under the trees, create a gentle harmony, a kind of balance. There’s something deeply human in his choice to include the figures in the foreground. They give a sense of scale and a sense of the building's place within a living community. It is a record of the real, yet it's also an interpretation, a crafted moment in time. Like any painting, it’s a conversation between the artist and the world, and now, between us and a moment captured long ago.