Untitled (Portrait of Seated Girl) 1850 - 1899

This ‘Untitled (Portrait of Seated Girl)’ is a photograph, a now-anonymous image mounted on card. The making of this photograph involved a complex chemical process that captured a fleeting moment, fixing it onto a physical substrate, and producing a positive from a negative. Photographs like these speak volumes about the rise of mass production and consumerism. Photography democratized portraiture, making it accessible to a wider segment of the population, rather than just the wealthy elite, but at the expense of artistic labor. The photographer was now a technician, not an artist. While we may not know the identity of the photographer or the sitter, this image speaks to the changing nature of labor and representation in an increasingly industrialized world. It challenges us to consider the social and economic forces that shape our perception of art and value, blurring the lines between craft, industry, and artistic expression.