Portret van een meisje, staand bij een stoel met boek 1861 - 1874

Albert Greiner made this photograph of a girl standing by a chair with a book at an unknown date. The girl’s dress, her tightly curled hair, and the ornate setting give us a glimpse into the visual culture of the European middle class, and how gender identity was expressed and performed through material markers. What does it mean to stage such a young child in this way? The girl’s direct gaze is both innocent and unsettling, and the book she leans on—a symbol of knowledge and status—seems almost too heavy for her small frame. The photograph invites us to reflect on the roles we assign to children, and the complex ways in which class and gender shape our expectations of them, both then and now. It prompts a consideration of how childhood itself is constructed, and the weight of the adult world it already carries.