Portret van Irene With en een onbekende vrouw lopend over straat 1920 - 1930

This small photograph shows Irene With and an unknown woman walking down the street. It was made by an anonymous artist, sometime in the early twentieth century. There is a quietness to this picture, a softness. The image quality is hazy. Look at the tonal range, how the blacks are more like dark greys, and the whites are creams. It’s like a memory, slightly out of focus and incomplete. The figures are centrally framed, but slightly off-centre, the figures are slightly blurred as if they were walking as the photograph was being taken. The image is cropped with a sense of the informal spontaneity of a snapshot, and there is something compelling about the directness of the figures, who seem to be walking purposefully along the street. The surface of the image is matte. This emphasizes the feeling of a world caught unawares, fleeting and impermanent. These small photographs are like glimpses into the past, they are suggestive rather than descriptive. This piece calls to mind the work of Eugène Atget, another artist who documented the streets of Paris with a similar sense of quiet observation, and the acceptance of ambiguity.