Theodoor Brouwers made this small photograph, ‘The daughter of a contract worker on the Accaribo plantation,’ sometime between 1875 and 1932. It's printed as a stereo card, so there are two identical images side by side. It’s such a simple composition, really. The girl perched on the gate is at the center, but it’s the texture that really grabs me. The rough, almost blurry quality of the photographic print gives everything a tactile feel, like you could reach out and touch the weathered wood of the gate or feel the weight of the humid air. I love the way the light catches the girl's dress, making her pop against the backdrop of the plantation, like she is the most important thing in the picture. It's almost painterly, with soft, smudged edges. Brouwers' work is not dissimilar to the work of someone like James Van Der Zee, in that they both use photography to document aspects of Black life. Brouwers embraces ambiguity, so we are left to reflect on the image with our own experiences.