Portret van een onbekend meisje in een venster 1892 - 1906

Curator: My first impression is melancholy, a quiet stillness almost… it's as if the young girl in this picture is suspended between worlds, isn't it? Editor: Precisely! We’re looking at an early photographic portrait, dating from the late 19th century. The Rijksmuseum holds this print by Machiel Hendricus Laddé, and it is curiously named: *Portrait of an Unknown Girl in a Window.* Curator: It's a simple composition, but the artifice makes it compelling, with the studio backdrop pretending to be something else entirely, maybe hinting at classical architecture and lush overgrown flora. The girl's direct gaze… well, it hints at dreams we will never know. Editor: That contrast you pinpoint between manufactured setting and intimate gaze is central. Photographic studios at this time sought to elevate the medium through theatrical contrivances. It’s a Gelatin-silver print enhanced with colored pencil, a hybrid creation reflecting both the aspirations and the technical constraints of early photography. Laddé would have carefully posed his subject, perhaps directing her expression to project a specific form of middle class feminine virtue. Curator: There's a gentleness, though, wouldn't you say? That barely perceptible hint of a smile… And the dark stripes around her shoulders are mirrored again around her wrists, like she’s about to take flight, some kind of striped and banded songbird. The slight softening of the edges, possibly from the hand tinting? Beautiful! Editor: You have to think about audience when considering these portraits. Studios sold them as carte-de-visite, popular and affordable souvenirs. Imagine them tucked into albums, a physical and very democratic symbol of one's aspirations towards cultured respectability and middle class success! That imagined “window” suggests security, too, and the flowering motif on the surrounding “stone” backdrop emphasizes an idealised vision of youth. Curator: Knowing that context doesn't negate my emotional response to this unnamed girl, to this little bloom held within photographic chemistry, does it? Art has always needed those layers to whisper meaning and to ignite recognition… or maybe just sympathy. Editor: Sympathy certainly. That girl, suspended between reality and representation, manages to hold her own across the centuries. Curator: Her secrets too… carried down the winding tunnel of years.