Portret van een vrouw en een man met snor 1895 - 1920

Wolffram & Comp. made this small portrait of a woman and a moustached man with some kind of photographic process. It's a subdued palette, all greys and creams, except I find myself drawn to the tiny rose on the woman's dress. It’s just a small detail, but it gives her character. She has such soft features, but her eyes! They’re looking straight at us, with a sort of knowingness, or is it sadness? Is the moustached man her husband, or perhaps her brother? He seems to be gazing off into the distance, lost in thought. Photographs, like paintings, always leave you wondering about the relationship between the subject, the artist, and the viewer. In this photograph, there's a kind of ambiguity to how the couple relate to one another. They're separate, yet together, each lost in their own world. It reminds me a little of Gerhard Richter's portraits, which capture this strange distance between people even when they're physically close.