Portret van een staande vrouw in Scheveningse klederdracht 1902 - 1906

Albert Frederik Kierdorff made this intriguing photograph of a standing woman in Scheveningen traditional dress, and it’s the process of seeing that gets me. The limited palette heightens the textures. I love how the edges of the shawl are fringed, and the heavy skirt falls, almost merging, with the floor. There are interesting glitches too, in the lower half of the image, near the skirt – is that light damage? This reminds us that the image, and our looking, is mediated by the object itself, aged and worn. The detail on the chair on the left is amazing, but what really grabs me is the simple, functional chair on the right, which looks like a drawing of a chair rather than a real chair. It creates a tension, a push-pull effect, making me think of other photographers such as say, Atget. But of course, Kierdorff has his own way of seeing. There is no right way to read this.