Portret van Louise Michaeli, zittend 1855 - 1875

Curator: The sitter in this photograph from the Rijksmuseum is "Portret van Louise Michaeli, zittend", dating somewhere between 1855 and 1875. What strikes you first about it? Editor: All that fabric! Look at the sheen on her dress. You can almost hear the rustle. It's sumptuous, but she seems terribly weary. Her hand propping up her head just gives the picture a mournful kind of atmosphere, doesn’t it? Curator: Absolutely. I wonder about the physical endurance required for portraits of this era. We think of photography as instant, but posing for these long exposures—must have been a labor. Think of the material resources too: that dress, the studio itself... portraits weren't easily accessible to just anyone. Editor: True, a fascinating tension emerges between the apparent ease afforded by photographic technology and the continued constraints of class and wealth. And it shows up in her clothing, a huge dress requires a huge amount of work. Did that amount of labour translate into that tired posture? Curator: Exactly! The technology is "new" but still serves the purpose of communicating societal standing. There’s this push and pull—a new way of making images available, and an old hierarchy reinforced. Editor: Even that arched frame around her image, it turns the portrait into a miniature display, much like a museum. I'm imagining all of the darkroom chemicals needed to develop this one print; then the materials for mounting it like this! What sort of labor conditions produced the elements within the shot and the photograph as object? Curator: Right. I was just noticing, despite all those constrictions we have been pointing out, that I see the trace of something genuinely human behind her face. Maybe a melancholy soul contemplating life or... I don’t know, simply someone eager for the sitting to be over. I appreciate that it doesn't present her in an overly flattering way, though maybe that contributes to her melancholy appearance. Editor: Precisely; in all its imperfections, in its weariness. Thanks for showing how context deepens that view.