Portret van een vrouw 1856 - 1875

This small portrait of a woman was created by Johannes Wilhelmus Karsses, a Dutch photographer active in the mid-19th century. It is a photograph mounted on card stock, likely made using the albumen print process, a popular method at the time. The woman’s gaze is direct, yet there is an air of melancholy about her. Consider the social context: photographic portraits were a privilege, a marker of middle-class status. Think about the conventions of portraiture at that time, and the limited agency a woman had in representing herself. Was she trying to project an image of quiet respectability, or does her expression hint at something more complex? The formal constraints of the medium—the pose, the lighting—tell us something about the roles women were expected to perform. But within these constraints, the subject asserts her presence. What does it mean to look back at her, over a century later? How do we reimagine her story, her identity, and her emotional landscape?