Drie gekostumeerde mensen voor landgoed Pauw 1913

Curator: This is Geldolph Adriaan Kessler's "Three Costumed Figures Before Estate Pauw," a photographic print dating back to 1913, now held in the Rijksmuseum collection. It immediately strikes me as a record of leisure. Editor: It feels like a scene plucked right out of a dream, or perhaps a half-remembered play. There’s a dreamy softness, like the camera itself is sighing at the theatrics. They are posing, yet they seem suspended. I love the light filtering through the leaves behind them; it feels both natural and utterly staged. Curator: Indeed, there's an interesting tension between the seemingly spontaneous outdoor setting—a hallmark of "plein-air" photography—and the clear artificiality of their costumes. Look at the details of the fabrics, and imagine the labour involved in creating them, compared to the relaxed activity implied. What might the figures' roles be? Editor: Are they players in a private, aristocratic performance? Perhaps rehearsing, but taking the staging a bit more naturally. Their stillness feels almost eerie amidst the swaying grass. They all stand, as though frozen from doing some specific act, but the composition and background is inviting in the eye as if there's room for activity! And that house looming behind... What secrets does it hold? It gives me the strangest feeling! Curator: The print photography creates an accessible and reproducible art, different from traditional portraiture of that era, don't you think? Also consider that costumes allowed one to be a kind of tabula rasa, reinventing social roles... This piece then provides a crucial window onto class identity, even fabrication. Editor: Right, it invites a pondering. I can almost smell the freshly cut grass and the faint scent of mothballs from the costumes... The choice of the costume and the material, how were they acquired, what occasion might require this use? So many questions! It whispers, doesn't shout, revealing a certain intimacy amidst its performative facade. Curator: Exactly! These are interesting ways in. Considering this further contextualises it as more than a simple record; rather a constructed moment brimming with societal cues, which challenge us as a marker of social hierarchy within the arts of the era. Editor: A tableau of forgotten stories... that the artifice, with those fabrics and lush landscape elements, can be seen at different times with the eye and mind; that's where some life gets breathed in, now looking at it with you. Thanks for taking the time!