Portret van Corry Goelst 1932

This photograph of Corry Goelst, its maker now anonymous, is like a fragment of a feeling, pinned down. It is the texture of light and shadow on her satin dress that holds me. It’s hard to really know now, viewing the image in reproduction, but I can sense how, when handled, the emulsion of the original photograph would have been somehow tactile, an almost sculptural surface created by light. See how the dress seems to flow, a cascade of tones. The way the light falls, it is as if the image has almost been painted, the tones laid on, each next to the other. It's a dance of light and dark, not unlike a Willem de Kooning abstract expressionist painting. The longer you look, the more you realize that this image, like any good photograph, is as much about feeling as it is about seeing. It reminds us that art is an ongoing conversation, always inviting new perspectives.