Portret van twee jonge meisjes 1873 - 1915

This is a small photograph by Camillus Franciscus van der Aa, showing two young girls. It's a historical object, now, but when it was made, photography was a relatively new medium, not yet fully integrated into the world of fine art. Looking at this portrait, we can consider the chemical processes involved: the precise developing of the image. These were skills that placed the photographer somewhere between a technician, a chemist, and an artist. And we might also think of photography as part of an industrialized visual culture, in which images could be multiplied and circulated as never before. The very qualities that made photography so appealing--its reproducibility, its mechanical nature--were for a long time held against it by those who valued the supposedly unique touch of the artist's hand. But today, we recognize that the technologies of image-making are themselves a kind of language. They shape our perception of the world.