Portret van een onbekende vrouw met drie kinderen 1852 - 1888

This photograph of an unknown woman with three children was made by Dirk Engel. It's a modest object, made with a chemical process that was still relatively new at the time, though rapidly becoming democratized through commercial photography studios. Engel's practice reflects this shift. The Carte de visite—a calling card— was made from an albumen print, a process involving paper coated with egg white emulsion. The image would have been captured using a camera obscura, with the sitter posed in front of a neutral backdrop for a brief moment, before being developed and mounted onto card stock. The photograph presents us with the image of a mother with three children. It is in itself a material trace of a moment in time, and of the labour that went into it. It serves as a reminder of the wider economic forces which allowed this family to participate in a new form of visual representation. These images are a tangible reminder of the individuals who lived and worked during the period.