Description
Taken at water level, at Hoa Lu, the image is organised into three clear values: a white sky, uniform, almost abstract; banks and hills reduced to silhouettes; and between the two, the surface of the river, which gathers the light of the sky and returns it in silvery shivers. The karst peaks answer one another from bank to bank and gently close the perspective, while a palm tree, on the right, leans its dark mass over the water. Near the shore, slender fishing poles rising out of the surface introduce the scene’s only human trace. Black and white here embraces full blacks, without detail, which turn the vegetation into a mere outline — and concentrate all attention on that corridor of brightness the river opens through the middle of the landscape.
