Portret van een man 1860 - 1900

Editor: This is an undated portrait, simply titled “Portret van een man”, sometime between 1860 and 1900. It’s a historical photograph, probably a wet collodion print or similar process. The image has an oval frame that suggests an album or cabinet card, and a nostalgic pictorialist style, but there's a weariness to the sitter that feels very real. What do you see in this piece that I might be missing? Curator: Ah, that "weariness" you perceive! Yes, I feel it too. The soul staring out across a century or more… It’s always there, isn’t it, etched on faces, in how they held themselves still for those exposures that took an eternity. To me, this isn’t just a document of a beard, or a well-cut coat. He’s meeting our gaze through time; the photographer captured his quiet dignity for eternity. But what do you think this image is trying to "say," or, maybe a better question, is this just a 'who' or also a 'what'? Editor: That's a fascinating distinction! It's certainly a "who" - a person, meticulously captured, preserved even. But I wonder about the "what" – the values, aspirations, or maybe even the anxieties of that era trying to show through… Perhaps how society was reflected in self-representation at that moment. Do you think that photographic portraiture really allowed that much insight into the sitter's cultural milieu, beyond, say, his economic status implied by his suit? Curator: Perhaps more than paintings, really. Photography tried to mirror its sitter as much as it could in the infancy stage. So it couldn’t avoid, perhaps subconsciously, all the cultural details it took to 'build' a person at that time. What do you think a viewer from 2060 might be gleaning about our culture from, say, the selfies plastered all over our modern world? Maybe this photo says to us 'We were also anxious; our world wasn't too different than yours is now.' Editor: Wow. A cultural mirror, across the ages. I’ll never look at an old photograph quite the same way again. Thanks. Curator: Anytime. Isn't it brilliant that they keep talking back?