Portret van een onbekende vrouw met een omslagdoek before 1881

This photographic portrait of an unknown woman with a shawl was made by P. Piquepé, using a process that was still relatively novel at the time. What's interesting here is the explicit comparison, noting that the image on the left is "sans retouche," or unretouched, while the one on the right has been refined. Photography, born of chemistry and optics, always had an uneasy relationship with the idea of truth. It was a mechanical medium, yet from the start, practitioners sought ways to manipulate it. Here, that tension is brought to the fore. The very act of posing, dressing, and presenting oneself to the camera suggests a level of artifice. In this light, the difference between the two images becomes less about objective reality and more about cultural ideals, and the labor involved in achieving those ideals. This is a powerful reminder that no image, however seemingly transparent, is ever truly unmediated.