Willem Drees 1958

Cornelis Thomas Ferguson made this photograph of Willem Drees, but when, nobody knows. The grayscale is so classic. I can imagine Ferguson in the darkroom coaxing the image out of the chemicals, like magic. Looking at the image, I imagine Ferguson thinking about how to capture not just Drees's face, but something of his essence. What was he like? What did he stand for? How can an image capture that? The lines around his eyes and mouth seem to tell a story of experience, wisdom, maybe even a bit of weariness. It makes me think about how artists are always wrestling with these kinds of questions: how do you make a picture that does more than just represent? How do you get at something deeper, something true? It's the same for painters, really. We're all just trying to figure out how to make marks that mean something. How to have a conversation across time.