Gezicht op de Geldersekade in Amsterdam 1886 - 1910

George Hendrik Breitner made this photograph of the Geldersekade in Amsterdam, using a process that was still relatively new at the time. Breitner was fascinated by the way photography could capture fleeting moments of everyday life, and he often used it as a tool for his paintings. The material qualities of photography itself, the tones and textures it can produce, clearly appealed to him. Photography has always had a complicated relationship with labor, on the one hand offering the potential for mass production of images, on the other hand requiring a skilled operator to capture the right image, and process it in the darkroom. In Breitner's time, photography was still a relatively specialized skill, and this photograph reflects both the artist's technical expertise, and his eye for the social realities of Amsterdam at the turn of the century. It reminds us that every photograph is a product of both art and labor, and that the value we assign to it depends on how we understand that relationship.