Portret van twee onbekende meisjes Possibly 1912 - 1914

Paul Arthur Weise made this photograph of two unknown girls sometime around the turn of the century. It’s a small black and white image, a kind of formal portrait. I imagine Weise setting up his camera, fussing with the lighting, arranging the girls just so. Did he chat with them, try to put them at ease? They look a bit solemn, don’t they? There’s a stillness to the image, a quietness that makes you wonder what they were thinking. The girls stand stiffly, posed like objects, yet they're also people, right? In a sense, it doesn’t matter that we don’t know who they are, because Weise has offered them a kind of immortality, this moment saved from time. The photograph invites us to linger, to empathize, to imagine their lives and wonder about our own. Just like a painter, Weise has composed a little world for us to enter.