Portret van Willy Bennink 1934

This is "Portret van Willy Bennink" by Carl Knikl. It's a photograph. The tones are soft, but there’s a real clarity in the shadows, giving a sense of depth. I’m drawn to the way the light catches the subject’s hair. The texture of the image adds to this sense of depth and softness. The grainy quality reminds me of the physicality of early photography, the darkroom alchemy involved in developing images. It’s amazing to think that this image was captured with light and chemicals, a process that seems almost magical now. It makes me think about the daguerrotypes made by artists like Nancy Ford Cones, who saw photography as a painterly medium. Like her work, this image seems to want to do something more than just reproduce reality. In the end, it’s this ambiguity and open-endedness that makes this so captivating.