Portret van een onbekend meisje in Zeeuwse klederdracht 1890 - 1914

This carte-de-visite shows an unknown girl in Zeeland traditional dress, and was made by Abraham van Overbeeke sometime in the late nineteenth century. I love the tonal range here, it's almost entirely in blacks, grays, and whites. The dress is matte and textured, with these little squares arranged in rows. It’s hard to tell if the dress is a very dark color or if it is in fact black. The collar and the headpiece seem to glimmer. There's something about the girl's posture that's so rigid, so intentionally posed. Her expression is impossible to read. The picture almost comes alive because she remains unknowable. This work reminds me of some of the portrait photography of Julia Margaret Cameron, who similarly captured her sitters with an intimate and unconventional gaze. Both artists seem to invite us into a world where ambiguity and subjective experience take precedence over objective representation.