Portret van Denise Vande Velde-Borgeaud, eigenaar van gesloten modehuis in Brussel en Londen c. 1930 - 1936

This is a photograph, of course, of Denise Vande Velde-Borgeaud, who owned a now-closed fashion house in Brussels and London. What strikes me first is the anonymity of the photographer and the almost accidental way it seems to have been produced. The grainy texture and sepia tone give it a timeless quality, like a faded memory, you know? The way the light catches her face makes her look simultaneously present and distant. It’s the kind of image you might find tucked away in an old family album, full of untold stories. And I wonder, looking at the image, what kind of a person she was, what it was like to be a woman running a fashion house in Brussels and London. The image seems less about photographic representation and more about preserving a moment in time, of keeping the memory of a person alive. It reminds me of the work of artists like Gerhard Richter, who explore the themes of memory, history, and representation in their paintings.