The Madame B Album c. 1870s

This photograph comes from "The Madame B Album", created by Marie-Blanche Hennelle Fournier, a French photographer active in the late 19th century. Fournier belonged to a generation of women who found in photography a means of expression that challenged the constraints of their gender. This image offers us a glimpse into the leisure activities of the bourgeoisie, a world of horse-drawn carriages and carefully posed family portraits. However, Fournier subtly disrupts the traditional representation of women as passive subjects. By placing herself behind the camera, she claims agency, documenting her world from her own perspective. There's a quiet subversion at play here; Fournier captures not just an image, but a sense of self-determination.