Tempel van Nikè op de akropolis van Athene before 1910

Frédéric Boissonnas made this cyanotype of the Temple of Nike on the Acropolis probably sometime in the early twentieth century. I imagine Boissonnas, lugging his equipment up that hill, frame by frame, and shot by shot, to capture the light as it hits the columns. You can almost feel the sun beating down. You know, there's something about the cool, blue monochrome that gives the image this sense of timelessness, like it could be from any era. It's almost like he's trying to freeze a moment, to hold onto something permanent in the face of constant change. The cool shadows between the columns evoke both the weight of the structure and the fleeting nature of light. The way the image is made, it's like he's not just showing us a temple, he's showing us how we see, how we perceive, how we try to grasp something solid in a world that's always slipping away. And that's what art does, right? It makes us stop, look, and wonder.