Portret van een vrouw met een hoed c. 1921

This 'Portret van een vrouw met een hoed' was made by Photo Couleur at an unknown date, and with a camera, obviously. Here, everything is about surface and texture, or the lack thereof. The almost complete absence of colour flattens the image, yet simultaneously it is full of depth. Look at the woman’s dark coat and hat, set against the out-of-focus backdrop. It’s like she is emerging from the forest. The surface is smooth, reflecting light evenly, but there is a roughness around the edges. What happened there? Did the photograph get wet? Or has the emulsion started to peel? It’s hard to say. I like these traces of time. It reminds me that art is about more than the original moment of creation. It’s about the afterglow, the journey, the multiple lives an artwork can have. Like those paintings by Gerhard Richter, which look like photographs, but which have been dragged through mud.