Portret van Willem Carel van der Kop, Wilhelmina Gerarda Hoogendijk en een onbekende man op een veranda c. 1905 - 1915

This photograph shows Willem Carel van der Kop, Wilhelmina Gerarda Hoogendijk, and an unknown man on a veranda. The man in the center is wearing a fez. This headwear, with its roots in ancient Greece, was popularized in the Ottoman Empire as a symbol of modernity. But the fez extends beyond mere fashion. The conical shape echoes the Phrygian cap, worn by freed slaves in antiquity, reappearing during the French Revolution as a symbol of liberty and revolution. Note how the man in the photo is presenting a document of some kind. This recalls ancient Roman imagery, where the presentation of scrolls and tablets signified authority, law, and the transmission of knowledge. Even today, we see echoes of this gesture in academic ceremonies or legal settings. Such images are part of a continuous chain, a cultural mneme, where the past is not dead but actively shapes our present.