Portret van een staande jongen, naast een tafel met een hond 1895 - 1920

This small photographic print is by Carl Sandels, who made it sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It's a portrait of a boy standing next to a table with a dog, but, of course, it's also about seeing, or about how we look at each other. What strikes me is the formality of the pose, the way the boy is dressed in his small suit, the dog so well-behaved, sitting to attention. It speaks of a very different relationship to photography than we have today. It's a constructed reality, this portrait. Look at the texture of the boy’s jacket, the way the light catches the weave of the cloth. And then the dog, those alert eyes, that slightly worried expression. I think Sandels is thinking about the relationship between humans and animals, about our place in the world. Think about the work of someone like William Wegman, who often uses his dogs as models. There's a similar sense of humor and playfulness, a willingness to let the animal be itself.