Portretten c. 1900 - 1925

This page of 'Portretten,' at the Rijksmuseum, contains a series of black and white photographs, pasted onto card, by an anonymous artist. It's like a visual diary, a material document of lived lives and relationships. The textures of the paper and the subtle tonal gradations in the photographs give it a tactile quality. The sepia tones and the way the images are fixed onto the page really draw me in. Each photograph is a small, contained world, and together they create a broader narrative. Take the top left photograph, the woman in the fur stole - she looks like she has something to say, doesn’t she? The way the fur wraps around her shoulders reminds me of the painterly gestures of someone like Alice Neel, who was equally interested in people, and in a certain kind of unvarnished truth. What stories do these faces tell, and what secrets do they hold? It’s this ambiguity that makes the work so engaging.