Portret van Karel Hendrik van Brederode 1858 - 1866

Editor: We're looking at "Portret van Karel Hendrik van Brederode," a gelatin-silver print photograph from sometime between 1858 and 1866, made by Polman & Hohmann. It has that classic 19th-century feel, with the gentleman leaning nonchalantly. What draws your eye when you look at this portrait? Curator: Oh, the delicate dance between formality and ease! It feels so staged, and yet… I wonder what was going through his mind in that captured instance. Notice the subtle fall of light on his face. The way it both reveals and conceals? Almost like he’s letting us in on a secret… a secret only known in sepia tones. It's romantic isn’t it? Editor: I hadn't thought about it like that, a kind of visual secret! So you think it's romantic rather than… stuffy? Curator: Stuffy implies a rigidity I don’t quite see here. I think what reads as formality to our contemporary eyes was simply *the* way one presented oneself in that era. The slight tilt of the hat, the chain dangling, these are little rebellions against that very stuffiness. Almost as if he’s saying, “Yes, I’m proper… but with a wink." Do you sense that push and pull? Editor: I can definitely see the wink now. That makes me think differently about the context, too, about photography still being a relatively new medium. Curator: Precisely. And to commission or sit for such a portrait, it was no small affair. Perhaps that explains that hint of both pride and self-awareness in his eyes? Maybe, he saw photography as something else as a way to capture history? Editor: It's amazing how much information you can glean from what I originally perceived as just a posed photo. Thanks for opening my eyes! Curator: My pleasure! It is these layered histories and subtle artistic decisions which truly makes these portraits magical, wouldn't you agree?