Portret van een onbekend meisje before 1903

This black and white photograph of an unknown girl was taken by Aura Hertwig sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century. I think the way light defines this image is fascinating. It feels so soft, like a memory, and this really comes down to the grey-scale and blurring effect. Everything seems to emerge from a hazy background, especially the girl's face and the pages of the book she is reading. This blurring effect, combined with the dark blacks and soft whites creates a kind of dreamlike state. You can see how light pools around her left eye, like a tear. It puts me in mind of some of the portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron, who was working a little earlier, but had the same taste for the tonal possibilities of early photographic processes. It's easy to think of art history as this set of fixed facts, but really it's just a big messy conversation between artists that stretches back centuries.