Portret van een man met snor 1900 - 1920

Here's a photograph by Louis Devolder, and it is small, only 82 mm high and 49 mm wide. I can't help but think about what it might have been like to pose for this portrait. The man with the mustache is dressed in a formal black suit with a bowtie. His expression is serious, slightly turned as if he is looking at something just out of the frame. You can imagine the photographer in a dark room with a light shining, and the sitter having to be very still for the moment to be captured. Photographs like this one are interesting to me because they speak to something like a time machine effect, like a conversation across time. There is so much that is unknowable, and yet the image continues to resonate and inspire. It reminds me that art is an exchange of ideas across time, an ongoing dialogue between artists that transcends the limitations of any single moment.