Portret van een onbekende vrouw before 1895

Curator: Look at this fascinating photogravure. It's called "Portret van een onbekende vrouw" or "Portrait of an Unknown Woman" and is dated before 1895. It seems to be inserted in a bound volume, perhaps a journal or report. What strikes you about it? Editor: There's a delicacy, almost an ethereal quality to her. The soft focus and the sepia tone give her a timeless, romantic air, like she stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. And there is also something about the way she seems to turn away from something in her environment, so I ask myself what moment this image has captured and the context surrounding the picture. Curator: Interesting, I see what you mean by the Pre-Raphaelite comparison. The composition is so intimate, isn't it? It's a gelatin silver print. I’d imagine it was chosen to capture a certain sense of nostalgia, considering the history surrounding these photographic mediums. I notice the text surrounding it, hinting at it being an extract from some scientific review. Editor: Perhaps so. Still, I can’t get past the fact that she is in an extracted environment – a kind of historical scrapbook almost, an almost fragile object that contrasts strongly with the mass produced industrialised methods that came to typify art production. Curator: Exactly, this makes me think more carefully about the role of gender here, because of the feminised sense of beauty of the subject as compared with the more functional writing displayed alongside. Editor: Precisely, and how are those conventions even maintained today? Curator: True. Ultimately it feels to me that we are granted an incomplete view of how beauty and gender operates, and how that plays into artistic production and its place in our social imagination. Editor: I find it curious how even a “simple” image can hold such complexity, forcing us to unravel all sorts of conventions, and social cues regarding our place in the world.