Gezicht op twee jonge ballerina's before 1902

Here's the audio guide script: This is Robert Demachy's photograph, "Gezicht op twee jonge ballerina's," made sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It's a small image, measuring only 110 by 64mm, and what strikes me is how the figures seem to emerge from the ground. Demachy's method here reminds me a little of Degas, not just in subject matter but in the way the surface of the photo seems almost like an etching or drawing. There's a softness, an almost dreamlike quality. You can see he’s playing with light and shadow, pulling out the details of the dancers' forms without ever making them too solid. Look closely at the way the light catches the tutu of the dancer on the right. It’s almost as if the light is a physical thing, like a cloud of chalk dust kicked up by their movements. Demachy was part of the Photo-Secession movement, which included photographers like Alfred Stieglitz. These artists saw photography as a fine art, something more than just documentation. Like a painting, photography is also a process. It doesn’t always have to tell you exactly what it is. Sometimes, ambiguity is the point.