Portret van een onbekende jongen 1892

Walter Damry made this carte-de-visite of an unknown boy sometime in the late 19th century, using photographic chemicals and paper. While it may seem simple now, photography was once a labor-intensive process that involved coating glass plates with light-sensitive emulsions, exposing them in a camera, and then developing them in a darkroom. The resulting images were often printed on paper and mounted on cards like this one. Damry was running a commercial studio, so this boy’s family would have been paying for a material demonstration of their social status. The photograph's sepia tone and soft focus give it a nostalgic feel, while the boy's formal attire and pose suggest a sense of self-importance, made all the more precious by the evident skill and care of Damry's technique. This small, mass-produced image thus encapsulates the complex relationship between art, craft, and commerce in the 19th century.