Portret van Carel Willink c. 1930

This photograph of Carel Willink was made by an anonymous photographer, using a gelatin silver process on paper. Photography is an unusual medium for a portrait in this period. Traditionally, portraits were the domain of painting and sculpture, but photography democratized the medium, making it accessible to the middle classes. This particular printing process was quite common in the early twentieth century. The gelatin silver process involved coating paper with a light-sensitive emulsion of silver halides in gelatin. The paper was then exposed to light through a negative, creating a latent image that was developed, fixed, and washed to produce a final print. It's interesting to consider the labor involved, too, from the factory workers producing the photographic materials to the photographer capturing the image. This photograph embodies a shift in creative production, away from unique handmade objects, and towards mechanically reproduced images made for popular consumption. In the end, this small photograph says a lot about the changing landscape of art and culture in the modern age.