Gezicht op een meisje met een mand bij een geit before 1890

Curator: This photograph, “Gezicht op een meisje met een mand bij een geit,” made before 1890, a gelatin silver print, intrigues me for its texture and its display. It exists within a book format. Editor: Yes, the Henri Schleusner print feels so intimate. The girl's interaction with the goat in this enclosed space makes me think about the realities of rural life back then. What strikes you most about it? Curator: The print being a gelatin silver one speaks volumes. The mechanization inherent in its production, through the labor in the factory preparing photographic papers and equipment, is essential to how it functions. Also the format -- that it lives in this collection of photographs that are collected in a volume-- affects its meaning.. Editor: That’s a good point about the materials. So you are saying the labor involved affects how it communicates to us? Curator: Absolutely. The photograph would be almost impossible to consume without gelatin-silver printing; thus its distribution depends on an unseen factory-scape and workforce who were exposed to the possibility of sickness by producing the item. What would we learn if we explored other elements such as Schleusner’s class or the book owner’s social status? Editor: It’s fascinating to consider those unseen hands that enable us to view it. Perhaps Schleusner, being a product of a quickly-industrializing world, attempted to capture and preserve images of an older, rural mode of living through the means of its own technology? Curator: Precisely. His work mediates on this tension. And, in considering how photographs live within books like this, it becomes clear how even photographic prints could take on special meaning in a more formal and commercial format. Editor: It is so different from how we mindlessly consume images today on social media. This gives me a lot to consider about image making, now and then. Thank you. Curator: It has been my pleasure. Thinking of how this was fabricated made me think again.