Portret van een onbekend kind op een kruk Possibly 1910 - 1918

Here's this photographic portrait of an unknown child on a stool, made by Abraham Warburg, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It’s a small image and, with its sepia tones, it is the kind of object to conjure up a specific time, a lost moment. I'm thinking about how Warburg, while making this photograph, saw something in the child, an essence, maybe an ideal. How he saw the world and what he wanted to capture in a single frame. It's like a painter with a brush, coaxing something onto the canvas, but here, Warburg uses light and shadow, perspective, and the very brief stillness of a child to make this particular image. I wonder how the child felt, sitting there for the photo, maybe a bit anxious, maybe bored? These old photographs are a testament to a past time, a reminder of how we see ourselves and others. I can’t help but feel a link to other image-makers, all trying to capture something, some kind of truth, about the world. Each one adds something to the conversation, like passing a brush to each other over time.