Portret van een baby, liggend in een stoel 1880 - 1920

This is a portrait by Axel Wester, portraying a baby lying in a chair, its dimensions a mere 83 by 51 millimeters. The composition is immediately striking: the softness of the infant juxtaposed against the ornate, patterned fabric of the chair. The photograph flattens the space, bringing the foreground and background into a unified plane. The choice of such a small format and the use of photography, a relatively new medium at the time, challenges traditional notions of portraiture. Instead of idealized grandeur, we see an intimate, almost casual depiction of early life. This challenges established values of representation and opens up new ways of thinking about the everyday. Consider how the formal qualities of the artwork—its scale, composition, and the choice of photography—function not just aesthetically but as part of a larger cultural discourse on representation and perception. The photograph captures a moment, a fragment, and in doing so, invites ongoing interpretation and re-interpretation.