Portret van een onbekend meisje c. 1870 - 1890

Curator: Look at this! This is "Portret van een onbekend meisje", an antique portrait of an unknown girl, created sometime between 1870 and 1890 by Johann von Petz. The photograph itself is a gelatin-silver print. Editor: There's something hauntingly innocent about her face, isn't there? The oval frame only heightens the feeling that we're peering into another world, another time, long gone. I wonder what her life was like. Curator: I’m thinking about the materiality here, right? Gelatin-silver prints – what a process! Coating paper, using a negative… it democratized portraiture, making images less the domain of the elite and more accessible to ordinary people, even if posing would take a minute. Editor: Do you think she was nervous? She seems rather serious for someone her age, staring right through you. What do you see when you observe the girl's pose and attire, her little pearl earrings? Curator: It’s the lace that captivates me—evidence of skilled labour. Lacemaking was typically a women’s industry. We can deduce about the availability of particular textiles, where she likely lived based on manufacturing practices… material analysis anchors us. Editor: And to me, there’s also a wistful charm to how photography captured fleeting moments, froze them. Did she know, standing there for what was then probably a small eternity, that we would be scrutinizing her image all these years later? The power of the gaze! Curator: The fact she's an unknown girl really heightens all of this for me: just one example of the countless workers who made clothing for burgeoning photographic clientele at this time, their own visages excluded from similar pictures. Editor: Yes! Though we may never know her name, the portrait invites endless stories, feelings, histories... It lives! Curator: Absolutely, that’s so compelling. Analyzing the photo chemicals is, ironically, the most evocative element. Editor: Exactly! You never know what life is concealed within the materials themselves.