Portret van een onbekend meisje in een communiejurk c. 1899 - 1913

Johannes van Doorne made this photographic portrait of a girl in her communion dress sometime between 1869 and 1926, on a small rectangular card. You know, I think about the way the light hits the girl’s dress and the way the veil drapes so delicately around her face. Did she feel beautiful, or just really uncomfortable? And what about van Doorne? What was he thinking as he adjusted his lens? The surface of the photograph is so smooth. You almost want to reach out and touch the girl's white dress, to see if it feels as soft as it looks. It makes me think about how, as painters, we try to capture a feeling, an emotion, a moment in time, but we can never really know what it was like to be there. It’s funny how we artists keep working on similar ideas, across generations. We’re all just trying to make sense of the world, one brushstroke or snapshot at a time.