Portret van een jongeman 1903 - 1912

Max Piepenhagen’s “Portret van een jongeman” is a photograph, and the sepia tone is like a memory, fading at the edges. The portrait is really small, like a carte de visite. What strikes me is how the young man's features soften into the background, an effect achieved through the tonal range, where light and shadow blur the lines of his face. There’s a real dance between clarity and ambiguity. Look at the soft glow around his shoulders, how it almost dissolves into the pale backdrop. It's like he's emerging from a fog, or being absorbed back into one. Think of early Gerhard Richter’s blurred photographs. There's a similar exploration of how images can both reveal and conceal. Maybe it is an illusion, a dance, a fading of time...