Vrouw met kind op schoot 1907 - 1916

This photo of a woman and child was made by Johannes Hendrikus Antonius Maria Lutz, and it's one of those old photos with a hand-tinted quality, kind of like a memory trying to hold onto its colors. The palette here is all soft blues and purples, with a gentle warmth trying to peek through, and the way the colors pool and blend gives it a watercolor feel. The woman's dress and the boy's clothes are like fields of tiny dots, almost pointillist, making the fabric seem alive. I keep coming back to the boy's collar, a splash of bright white that catches the light, making him look almost angelic, or maybe just a little mischievous. It reminds me of the work of someone like Pierre Bonnard, where the everyday is imbued with a tender, almost dreamlike quality. The beauty of art is that it's never just one thing, and these photos, like paintings, invite us to bring our own stories to the surface.