Portret van een onbekende jongeman in een uniform van het Leger des Heils c. 1907 - 1920

Alfred Seaman made this portrait of an unknown young man in a Salvation Army uniform with photography around the turn of the last century. I wonder what it was like to be him, setting up this shot. What was he thinking about? The light, the pose, the feeling he wanted to convey to the viewer. There’s a soft focus that creates a sense of depth in this photograph and also flattens it. It’s brown, but soft, like a memory. There’s something both direct and distanced in the young man’s eyes, a feeling that I recognize from portraiture. It’s a photograph of someone and yet it doesn’t show me everything. I am left wondering what they might have been thinking. Artists are in an ongoing conversation, inspiring each other across time. We try to embrace ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations. What do you think?