Een vrouw hangt met een zakdoek al wuivend uit het raamkozijn 1863 - 1968

This stereoscopic card showing a woman waving a handkerchief out the window was made by Loescher & Petsch. It's a little tableau, staged, of course, but still, it carries a lot of sentimentality, doesn't it? I try to imagine being the photographer. What's the setup like? How do you get this woman to hold still, to perform, to really *feel* this goodbye? I wonder what was going through her head. There's a lot of brown, sepia tones, the light is soft, and the details are sharp. The texture of her dress, the frills on the collar, the way the light catches on the glass… the whole thing evokes the feeling of looking back at a lost moment, like in a painting by Hammershoi. The artists of photography like Loescher & Petsch were in conversation with painters. They knew the kind of feeling that could be conjured with light and shadow and a simple scene. Like a painter, they crafted this image to be seen a certain way. They also leave it open for us to interpret this wistful moment in our own ways.