Twintig portretten van Emma Eames, Jeanne Demarsy, Francine Decroza en nog een actrice before 1891

This photogravure by Nadar presents twenty portraits of actresses, including Emma Eames, Jeanne Demarsy, and Francine Decroza. The composition is a grid, each portrait a small window into the sitter’s persona, rendered in soft sepia tones. The arrangement encourages us to consider the individual within the collective. Nadar, a pioneer in photography, challenges the traditional portraiture of painting by exploring reproducibility and seriality. This grid format, reminiscent of scientific classification, invites a structuralist reading. Each image, a signifier, contributes to a larger structure that reflects early photographic techniques. Consider how Nadar's process destabilizes the notion of a unique, authentic image. Through the formal constraint of the grid, Nadar investigates photography’s capacity to both document and categorize. This work serves as a discourse on the nature of representation itself.