KLM-personeel en handtekeningen c. 1949

This is a collage of gelatin silver prints, likely dating to the early decades of commercial aviation. Black and white photography at this time was a highly skilled practice, involving labor-intensive processes of capturing, developing, and printing images. Consider how the material itself speaks to social context. Photography democratized portraiture, once only available to the wealthy through painting. But it also required particular knowledge, and specialized equipment, creating a new form of expertise. In this collage, the individual photographs of KLM personnel and aircraft are combined with hand-written signatures. The arrangement creates a kind of collective portrait, celebrating the human infrastructure of this new mode of transport. Air travel at this time was both glamorous and risky, the preserve of the relative elite. This assemblage is thus a kind of corporate self-fashioning. Ultimately, this image is a reminder that all forms of visual culture are tied to specific processes of making, and therefore to wider social and economic structures.