Portret van een onbekende vrouw

This portrait of an unknown woman was made in 1866, by Herman Linck, using photography. I think of the history of artmaking as a conversation across time. Linck's photographic portrait and the accompanying text remind me of conceptual artists like Mel Bochner. Bochner's work integrates text and image, often dealing with the deconstruction of how we see. The image is sepia toned. The surface is relatively smooth, with a shallow depth of field. This, along with the limited tonal range, makes the woman seem somehow soft and dreamlike, like an apparition. I'm drawn to the way that the edges of the picture fade out of focus, almost dissolving. This softness might be Linck reminding us that vision is a process rather than something instantaneous. It also emphasizes the beauty of imperfection, of human seeing. It's a process of construction, of building understanding and meaning over time.