Portret van een meisje, mogelijk Sophie van Dijk, dochter van de fotograaf before 1905

This is a photograph by Andries Hermanus van Dijk, possibly of his daughter Sophie. It's a portrait, but it’s also so much more, isn't it? I always think about the process of making, even when it's photography, how the artist coaxes something into being. There’s a certain formality here, especially in the pose and the girl's dress. But it's the soft, almost blurred edges of the image that get me. The texture isn’t about sharp detail; it's about a kind of gentle light. The way the light catches the frills of her collar, there is a palpable innocence. It's like the photograph itself is breathing, capturing a fleeting moment in time. There's something about this image that reminds me of Julia Margaret Cameron, another photographer who blurred the lines of the medium. Like Cameron, Van Dijk is playing with how we see, inviting us to imagine beyond the surface of the image, into a space of memory and feeling.