Drie portretten van Petrus Hermanus Bon 1904 - 1917

Emile Muns made this photographic triptych of Petrus Hermanus Bon, we don't know exactly when, but it lives in an album. What strikes me is the way Muns captures Bon from multiple angles, like a cubist painting distilled into monochrome. The texture feels almost painterly. It's not about hiding the hand but revealing a perspective. The stark contrast between the sharpness of Bon’s features and the blurriness in the background gives the image a dreamy, almost surreal quality. There's a softness in the grey scale that invites the eye to wander, as if trying to solve the puzzle of Bon's character through light and shadow. It makes me think of Francis Bacon, and the way he'd re-photograph his own portraits, pulling and stretching the image to see if he could distort the boundaries of perception. Art's not about answers, it's about the questions we dare to ask.