Portret van een onbekende vrouw before 1903

This black and white photograph of an unknown woman by Alfred Schneider is a small inclusion in a larger book of collected photographs. The tone is eerie, like a daguerreotype uncovered in grandma's attic, and maybe that's down to the limited tonal range, the mid greys that flatten the image, or the sombre expression. I feel like she's peering into my soul, and I wonder what she sees there. The image appears in a book, the text below is in German, perhaps this was an illustrated text on photography and portraiture? It reminds me of August Sander's typologies, images of the German population in the interwar years. Like Sander's portraits, this image has a quiet stoicism and feels like an attempt to capture something of the inner life. That combination of technique, history, and psychological intensity makes it a photograph that stays with you.