Primordial Pool

Leafless autumn trees cast their reflections on small eddies of algae that swirl at the surface of a shallow pond. This pensive photograph was made by Howard Dearstyne, the only American student to graduate from the German Bauhaus, having studied at its Dessau and Berlin locations. After returning to the United States to teach architectural history, he continued to make photographs, specializing in color images of nature. Dearstyne thought of these works in relation to painting: “All the kinds and categories of visual effects found in painting,” he wrote, “can at some time, somewhere, be observed in the physical world about us.”