Japanse kinderen spelen een spel before 1908

This photograph by Geldolph Adriaan Kessler captures Japanese children playing a game, using a process that was still relatively novel at the time. Photography, as a medium, has always been intertwined with industrialization. The production of photographic materials—glass plates, film, and paper—relied on advances in chemistry and manufacturing. The act of taking a photograph made the world reproducible, turning human subjects into commodities. The image shows children in kimonos, probably made of cotton or silk, fabrics produced through complex systems of labor and trade. The arrangement of the children in the composition highlights the formal structure of the photograph itself. In thinking about this image, we can reflect on how photographic technology transforms reality, turning it into a seemingly objective record, all the while obscuring the underlying material processes and social relations that make the image possible.