Willem Drees 1958

This small portrait of Willem Drees by Cornelis Thomas Ferguson is a photographic print, and I'm immediately drawn to its tonal range. The way Ferguson coaxes so much depth from what are, essentially, shades of grey feels like a real act of making. Look at the way the light catches the lenses of Drees’s glasses, how his eyes are pools of shadow behind them, staring right out at us. The texture of his skin, the slight sag around his jawline, is rendered with such clarity that it feels like you could reach out and touch him. There's a raw honesty here, a sense of capturing a real human presence, that transcends the formality of the portrait genre. For me, it feels reminiscent of some of those early black and white Gerhard Richter portraits, there's a similar concern for the indexical and the authentic. This feels like more than just a picture; it's a moment, a memory, a trace of a life lived.