Familieportret met twee kinderen 1895 - 1920

Gustaf Lesser captured this family portrait with two children in a photograph, sized 141 by 98 mm. The sepia tones soften the scene, blending detail and emphasizing the essence of a moment captured. There's a formality to these kinds of posed family pictures, but it's the light, the way it glances off the children's hair and the mother's dress, that pulls me in. That's the beauty of photography, the way a chemical process, like painting, captures something so nuanced. The parents are very still, very serious, but the children are fidgeting, the girl looking straight to the camera with a smile. Maybe it was not as easy to pose children as it is today! Photography, much like any art form, is about the interplay between intention and accident, control and chance. Think about artists like Gerhard Richter, who smears and obscures photos in his paintings, embracing this tension. Lesser's 'Familieportret' is an exercise in balance, both personal and pictorial. It invites us to consider the many shades of representation and reality, and to find beauty in ambiguity.