Portret van een twee meisjes 1896 - 1920

F. Engel made this small photograph of two girls sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It has that antique sepia tone that is achieved chemically, through light and time, rather than through any digital filter that’s available to us now. There’s a softness here, a blurry quality that makes it seem like it could be a memory. The tonal range is very subtle, from a pale cream to a darker brown in the shadows beneath the girls, and the background is unarticulated, as if they are floating in time. The absence of colour somehow makes it more, rather than less, evocative. Look at the white dresses, barely distinguishable from the backdrop, and the girl’s faces which have a striking seriousness. What was it like to sit for a portrait at that time? This photo reminds me a little of the portraits of Alice Neel – who was also interested in conveying the psychological state of her sitters, and whose work shares some of that same rawness and honesty that is found in this image.