Portret van Wilhelm II van Duitsland 1906

This is Thomas Heinrich Voigt’s ‘Portret van Wilhelm II van Duitsland,’ made with photography sometime in the 19th century. It’s interesting to see how the image is framed within the album page, giving it a kind of relic-like quality, a captured moment. The tones are muted, lending a timeless feel to Wilhelm's stern gaze. It's all very controlled and posed, but there's something about the way the light catches the braid on his uniform that makes it feel almost sculptural. I find myself drawn to the area just above his hand, where the detail softens, and the crispness gives way to shadow. It’s a reminder of the way the medium of photography, like paint, can be both precise and elusive. You see the edges of the picture and the book, and it feels like that the photograph is not trying to do anything more than represent the subject, but it's about framing and context. It makes me think of those austere portraits by someone like Holbein, but filtered through a 19th-century lens. As always, it's about what you leave in and what you leave out, the choices that make the image.