Portret van een vrouw met halsketting met medaillon 1899 - 1908

This is a small portrait of a woman with a necklace and medallion, by Verbeke-Schodts Fils. It's a photograph, aged to sepia, and fixed into an album page. It's interesting to think about the material qualities of this kind of work. The slight undulation of the paper gives it away as something that can age and decay, something that feels quite intimate. The specks of dust accumulated over time scatter themselves across the woman's face like freckles. I'm fascinated by how the photograph's surface creates a sense of depth, where the subject seems to exist both within and beyond the frame. I like to think about the way the darks of the dress play against the pale skin of her face. I think about how the medallion hangs, a dark circle within a larger shape. There's a conversation here between light and dark, surface and depth. It's the kind of conversation that makes me think about art as an exchange of ideas across time, and it reminds me of the quiet intensity you find in the photographs of someone like Judith Joy Ross.