Portret van een meisje 1860 - 1900

Curator: Here we have an albumen print, “Portret van een meisje” – that's "Portrait of a Girl" – created sometime between 1860 and 1900 by the studio of Möhlen & Knirim. It is an amazing little glimpse into another time, a world in which one could commission, what we'd call now, a photograph. Editor: Wow, she looks so serious! Almost… stern. It’s the kind of face you’d imagine belonged to a headmistress, or maybe a budding novelist with Very Important Things to Say. Curator: Right! These studio portraits from this period often feel so constrained to us now. The subject, most likely from the emerging middle class, is signaling a commitment to specific moral and social values, carefully navigating gendered expectations through their appearance. What is seen as "dignified" during those days. Editor: It's interesting; I feel almost guilty, judging from a distance of over a hundred years, finding what seems cold about a style and a way of posing that were clearly intentional expressions of class and respectability. Makes me think of all the images of myself floating around now…future generations judging my awkward selfies! Curator: Absolutely, this gets us right to the heart of it. The power dynamics inherent in image-making – who gets to be seen, how they get to be seen, what visual cues dictate that visibility – they're not so different now. There are a ton of parallels between, what feels as "rigid," during this time, and, "how to cultivate and share images via Social Media" these days! The sitter makes strategic choices about presentation. Her gaze, directed just past the viewer, doesn’t challenge social hierarchies, but maybe asserts that of her newly solidified place. Editor: I still get caught up by the quiet dignity, there's something melancholic, in how the photograph’s faded and the sitter's expression so neutral, so, seemingly... vulnerable. What remains seems deeply felt, even though, so much of what shaped the picture is irrevocably lost. Curator: That lingering effect speaks to the complicated legacies of portraiture. The image of this young woman exists for us, long divorced from its original context, opening itself to contemporary re-interpretation and demanding an active viewership that can historicize its existence. Editor: Thanks for sharing the complexities of that with me. It makes me appreciate it, on another level.