Portret van een vrouw en drie kleuters in een tuin, waarschijnlijk de tweeling Ad (achter) en Johanna (rechts), Han (links) van der Kop en hun moeder W.G. Hoogendijk after 1903

Willem Carel van der Kop made this photograph of a woman and three children sometime around the turn of the century, probably with a glass plate camera. There's a real softness to this image, a sepia-toned world with indistinct forms. It's like memory itself, hazy and warm. I'm drawn to how the figures almost blend into the background. It's a far cry from the crisp, high-definition images we're used to today. The woman's fur collar seems to merge into the muted, overgrown garden. Look at the faces, they seem lit from within, like old-fashioned bulbs. The little girl in the foreground, with her feathered hat, is particularly striking. You can almost feel the texture of the feathers, even though the image is slightly blurred. It reminds me a little of Julia Margaret Cameron's portraits, these early photographs seem to exist between painting and sculpture, trying to capture something of the soul. There’s a quiet ambiguity here. It doesn’t attempt to fix a single story, but rather invites contemplation and multiple readings.