Portret van prins Hendrik met prinses Juliana als peuter 1911

This black and white photograph of Prince Hendrik and Princess Juliana was created by Guy de Coral & Co. sometime around 1911. What I notice first is the way the scene has been staged. It's interesting, isn't it, how much artifice is involved in trying to create a sense of naturalism? The whole composition feels so posed, and formal, but there’s also a tender vulnerability there, especially in the gaze of the baby. The photograph itself is a physical object, and that’s easy to forget when we look at images all day on our screens. But this would have been a treasured possession, carefully framed and preserved. The photograph is like a little portal. We see the plant right behind the figures; its fronds reaching out like fingers toward the ceiling. It lends a sense of depth to the composition as a whole. Photography is a process, a conversation between light and chemicals, time and place. It reminds me a little of the work of someone like Gerhard Richter who would play with focus and blur, to get at something about the elusive nature of memory and the way images work on us.