Portret van Cornelis Meereboer met een fiets 1890 - 1918

This is a photograph, made by J. Siewers & Zoon, portraying Cornelis Meereboer with a bicycle. The limited sepia palette is just gorgeous, and the way it flattens the image really pulls you into the past. I love how the light catches the spokes of the bike, making them almost disappear in places, like a half-remembered dream. The surface of the photo is smooth, but the image itself has a kind of grainy texture that adds to its antique charm. You can almost smell the old paper and chemicals, that particular scent of a time long gone. Look at the way his suit blends into the background, it’s like he’s both there and not there, present and absent. It reminds me of some of Gerhard Richter’s blurry photographs turned paintings, smudged and hazy, questioning the very nature of representation. Maybe art isn't about capturing reality, but about creating a space for memory and imagination.