Portret van een onbekende vrouw before 1903

This portrait of an unknown woman was produced by Gertrude Käsebier using a photographic printing process. The precise technique is not explicitly stated, but photographic prints of the era often involved a labor-intensive process of coating paper with light-sensitive emulsions, exposing it to a negative, and then carefully developing the image. The image quality has a soft, almost painterly quality, achieved through manipulation of focus and tonal range. This was part of the Pictorialist movement, which sought to elevate photography to the status of fine art. Käsebier and her contemporaries actively pushed against the notion of photography as a purely mechanical or documentary medium, instead seeking to emphasize the artist's hand. This involved darkroom manipulations and alternative printing methods. The very act of artistic creation through labor, craft, and the skilled manipulation of materials, sought to challenge the conventional hierarchy that elevated painting above photography.