Portret van een onbekende vrouw before 1892

This photogravure titled 'Portret van een onbekende vrouw' was created by Meisenbach's Autotype Company in Germany. It was designed to appear as an illustration in a book of photography and reprography. Autotype was an early form of photographic printmaking. The company was dedicated to producing high-quality reproductions, in this case, to be bound into publications of technical or scientific interest. The image itself is a portrait of an unknown woman, dressed in fine lace. The image seems calculated to appeal to a middle-class sensibility. This image of a fashionable lady may speak to the aspiration for social mobility that was a feature of German society at the end of the 19th century. To understand this image better, we could look at the history of German publishing, or the market for photographic illustration. Art like this is deeply embedded in the society of its time.