Portret van een staande jonge vrouw in klederdracht uit Duitsland 1860 - 1890

Curator: Let’s consider this albumen print, "Portret van een staande jonge vrouw in klederdracht uit Duitsland" – Portrait of a standing young woman in traditional German clothing - made sometime between 1860 and 1890. Editor: Thanks! There's a certain formality to it; she looks like she has been positioned. It's compelling! What captures your attention when you look at this photograph? Curator: The materiality of the photograph itself is what first strikes me. Albumen prints were fascinating chemical processes. The glass plate negative, the albumen from egg whites used to bind the image to the paper – each step reliant on specific material processes. How does this industrial-era production of images influence what we perceive in the photo? Editor: That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought of that! So you mean how the mass production of images might have shifted how people thought about… everything, including themselves? Curator: Precisely! The very act of creating and consuming these photographs was altering the social fabric. Think about the availability of clothing, its textures rendered for middle class people as consumer goods. Who had access to photography and why? What are your thoughts? Editor: It does make you wonder about the social dynamics at play – the photographer, the sitter, and the eventual owner of this object. I see how the "means of production," so to speak, becomes crucial to its meaning. Curator: Exactly. It reveals this woman in her context. The garment construction, its presentation, her class status. That dress did not grow on trees. That’s how the materiality helps the understanding. Editor: Thanks. I’m starting to see these old photographs not just as pretty pictures, but as products of labor and cultural forces. Curator: Indeed. This image becomes a point of departure into discussions around consumption, class, and the rapidly changing industrial world. A photo as evidence and artifact.