Portret van Hein van Steenis, staande op een bank Possibly 1934

This small black and white photograph shows a young boy standing on a sofa, and it got me thinking about the act of taking a photograph. It’s a process of capturing a moment, like a painter capturing a feeling. I can imagine the photographer carefully framing the shot, thinking about composition, light and shadow, and trying to catch the subject’s personality. They might have been considering how the texture of the sofa or the boy’s pose could convey a particular mood. Was he told to stand there? Does he want to be there? That one little gesture, the hands in the pocket, speaks volumes. It’s like a brushstroke, quick and decisive, that communicates something essential about the boy’s character. In the end, photography and painting are really not so different; they’re both about seeing, feeling, and trying to make sense of the world around us. They are in conversation with one another. Each inspires the other, pushing us to see things in new and unexpected ways.