Portret van een leerling van de Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage Possibly 1921 - 1929

This small portrait of a student at the Colonial School for Girls and Women in The Hague, Holland, was made by an anonymous photographer. The limited grey scale palette makes you think about the art of seeing as a process. The image is small, but full of texture. Take a close look at the woman’s fur collar, it feels like you could almost reach out and touch it. The textures in the fur are soft and hazy, in contrast with the hard lines in her felt hat. The soft curls framing her face mirror the tones in the fur. There’s a wonderful ambiguity in the way the portrait is constructed. It's both very formal and also somehow intimate. The way the image is slightly faded with age contributes to that sense of faded grandeur. This reminds me of some of the portraits made by Gertrude Käsebier, particularly in the way the subject is both solid and ethereal. But ultimately the dialogue of art is one without end, a space of free association and possibility.