Sepia Pointillism

I am told that this is a photograph of my mother-in-law, Edith, with her nephew Edward. The thing that struck me about it was not so much the subjects, but the combined effect of age-related fading and the stipple paper the photo was printed on. Together they have created a kind of “sepia pointillism” which gives the portrait a slightly haunted feeling. Nobody was saying “smile for the camera”, or if they were, they were being ignored.