Foto c. 1895 - 1925

This photograph, titled Foto, was made by W.G. Hondius van den Broek. It's a portal into the past, rendered in shades of ghostly white against deep blacks. The photo feels more like an echo, a fading memory pulled from the depths of time. I’m really drawn to how the texture of the image amplifies its ethereal quality. The grainy surface, filled with tiny imperfections, mimics the fallibility of memory. There are subtle drips, smudges, and scratches around the edges, as if the image is slowly dissolving, like it is a fragment of some longer, lost reel of film. It’s this texture that really draws me in, each mark a reminder of time's relentless passage. The composition is pretty simple, a man and a woman staring straight at the camera. But look at the eyes, especially the woman's. They’re both intense and melancholy, filled with a sense of longing or perhaps regret. You know, it makes me think of artists like Gerhard Richter, who also played with blurring and distortion to explore the themes of memory and history. It's like one long conversation between artists through time.