Studioportret van de zussen Heeger en Bianchi after 1907

This is a studio portrait of the Heeger and Bianchi sisters, caught by L.B.J. Serré using photography. I love these old photos. It's like, what was it like to be them? Did they choose those hats, or was that just the thing everyone wore? I'm thinking about how the making of a photograph back then, not like now, was a whole event. They went to a studio, with a painted backdrop, and struck a pose for a long exposure time, and then this image emerges. You can sense a kind of formal arrangement here. A composition. It's like they're performing for the camera, but also just trying to be themselves, sisters caught in a moment of time. They have such serious faces. I wonder if they ever saw a painting by someone else and thought, I want to make something like that. It's all one conversation, you know?