Wilhelmina van Zijll de Jong en Henriëtte Wassink 1930 - 1935

This is a photograph of Wilhelmina van Zijll de Jong and Henriëtte Wassink, made by an anonymous photographer at an unknown date. The monochromatic tones are striking, like a painting rendered in shades of gray. It makes me think about how the photographer saw the world, reducing everything to tonal values, a process that, in itself, is an act of interpretation, and even a kind of translation. Consider the backdrop, the way the house fades into the soft mist, the branches a skeletal tangle against the sky. The darkroom work is palpable; it has a clear materiality. This reminds us that every photograph is more than a captured moment – it's a made thing. It's hard to know exactly when it was made, but looking at the clothing and the haircuts, I'd guess this was taken sometime in the 1920s. The cropped format of the print reminds me of the work of artists such as Gerhard Richter, who also uses photography as a source for painting, embracing its inherent ambiguity and layering new meanings onto found images.