Portret van een vrouw met twee baby's op de arm, waarschijnlijk de tweeling Ad en Johanna van der Kop met hun moeder W.G. Hoogendijk after 1901

This small portrait of a woman with two babies was made by Willem Carel van der Kop. The brown tones make me think this might be a photographic print, maybe albumen. I wonder about the moment this was taken. The mother looks straight ahead, a half-smile on her face, while the babies in their bonnets and frilly dresses look in different directions. How difficult to pose for this shot! Did the photographer have to work quickly to capture the image before the babies started crying? I like to think about the impulse to record likenesses and family. How people want to hold onto memory, and how photography was a newer way to do so. I think of other artists like Alice Neel who documented the people closest to them, too. All artists are in a constant conversation with each other and those who came before them. The making is an attempt to wrestle with how we see the world, and how we make meaning.