Portretten van onbekende personen c. 1900 - 1920

This page of portraits by an anonymous artist is part of an album in the Rijksmuseum. What I like about this is the feel of a really old social media feed. All these faces, these lives, preserved on a single page. There's something about the way these little worlds are set apart in their own rectangles and ovals that reminds me of the way a painter makes individual marks on a canvas, each one a gesture toward something larger. I can imagine the person who put this together, carefully arranging these fragments of memory, each photograph its own complete statement. Like the first brushstroke on a canvas, each image is a beginning, a step toward something that might become meaningful later on, or maybe not! We're not sure who these people are, but we’re still drawn to their faces. Isn't that how we all build ourselves up, bit by bit?