Portret van Beatrix, koningin der Nederlanden 1940 - 1942

This photograph of Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands, was made by an anonymous photographer. It's a grayscale image, and you can see the texture of the photographic paper it’s printed on. Look at the softness of the baby's face. The photographer really worked those light and dark values. There’s a ring of little toys and figures around the baby, and in the lower portion of the picture plane, there's some text. I'm really drawn to the area above her head. It's like looking into the lens of a dream. And how interesting it is that someone chose to surround this image with these other soft forms. It reminds me of work by artists like Hannah Höch, who explored identity and representation through collage. It's a gentle invitation to consider identity and the way we construct meaning through images. It’s also a reminder that art isn't just about what we see; it's about how we see, and the stories we tell ourselves about the world around us.