Portret van Okey Odell 1934

Editor: This gelatin-silver print, "Portret van Okey Odell" from 1934, captures its subject with an incredible starkness. The light, the lines… there's something almost haunting about his gaze. What’s your take on it? Curator: Haunting is a good word. It’s a remarkably direct portrait, isn't it? The kind that makes you wonder about the person behind the eyes, and maybe the person holding the camera too. It feels very much of its time, wouldn't you say? Like it has a story, just beyond the surface? The neutrality of the image style almost begs the viewer to fill in those gaps, to give him a past and a future. It invites curiosity, I suppose is the heart of it. Do you feel any particular era resonates with it for you? Editor: Definitely the 1930s come to mind, with that very direct, almost documentary-style portraiture, so, yes. But it feels very Modernist and Realist to me at the same time. All this begs the question: does photography as a medium alter the definition of what Realism is? Curator: Absolutely! This photograph lives within a world trying to reconcile how a machine might portray what’s “real” but the hand behind that machine is what makes art so… human. Realism suddenly becomes filtered, a curated reality. That push-pull creates the tension we feel when we view photographs like this, no? Does his expression reveal realism or hide from it? I imagine the story is as variable as there are viewers. Editor: I didn't think about how that almost clinical aesthetic enhances that curiosity even more. He just... *is*. Well, this was insightful and now I know more! Curator: Agreed. It certainly reframed how I saw those eyes looking back. Cheers to looking!