Portret van een onbekende jonge vrouw before 1930

This photographic portrait of an unknown young woman was made by American Automatic Fotografie, though we can't be sure exactly when. The sepia tones give the whole image a kind of hazy, dreamlike feel. But it’s the backdrop that really catches my eye – this slightly out-of-focus landscape that makes me think about studio photography as an act of construction and imagination. You’ve got this real person, but she's placed in front of this fake world. It's funny, right? Look at her eyes, though. She seems so self-assured, and her posture is relaxed yet proper. It almost suggests a collaboration between the sitter and the photographer. This piece feels like a precursor to later photographic portraits by artists like Cindy Sherman, who also explored identity as a performance. But unlike Sherman, this young woman remains a mystery. Maybe that’s the beauty of it – the ambiguity, the space it opens up for us to fill in her story.