Portret van een vrouw 1882 - 1922

This is H.C. de Graaff's "Portret van een vrouw," we don't know when it was made, but de Graff was active in the late 19th and early 20th century. It's a small portrait, about the size of a playing card. I am intrigued by the way photography captures a sense of fleeting time and emotion, a frozen moment in time. There's a stillness, an anticipation in the way the woman poses. I imagine de Graaff trying to capture something of her spirit and the material of photography trying to pin down the aura of a person. Painters and photographers have always been in dialogue, each medium inspiring and challenging the other. Maybe de Graaff saw the portraitists around him, the way they tried to pin down an essence, and wanted to do the same with light. I like to think of artists as being in an ongoing conversation, each one building upon the ideas and techniques of those who came before, or trying to break the mold and do something completely new!