Tombeau Imaginaire 4 2019

Elina Brotherus made this photograph called 'Tombeau Imaginaire 4', in a location that gives me the feeling of the South, under a sky heavy with cloud. I imagine Brotherus as a painter, setting the stage and waiting, waiting, for a moment of something to emerge. It feels like she is setting up a scenario for something to happen, or perhaps to tease out something already there, latent. A figure stands near the gate of a tomb, half hidden by two tall cypresses. I wonder what she was thinking as she looked through the lens and saw how the light would transform a gloomy scene into something that is on the verge of transforming. She is thinking, and the camera is thinking, too. Artists have always been in dialogue, across generations, and I imagine Brotherus in conversation with painters like Caspar David Friedrich and Vilhelm Hammershøi, making quiet paintings that invite us to look at them, and keep looking.