Portret van een (vermoedelijk) Franse militair, staand met een hoed onder de arm c. 1860 - 1890

Curator: This intriguing piece, "Portrait of a (Presumed) French Military Man, Standing with a Hat Under His Arm," is an albumen print dating from around 1860 to 1890. Editor: Right, first impressions… he looks so serious, almost melancholy. The sepia tones lend an antique weight, but there's also a stiffness, a kind of performance happening here. I imagine those uniforms were not very breathable! Curator: Exactly, and albumen prints involved coating paper with egg white, which creates a glossy surface that enhances detail but also contributes to that somewhat artificial sheen you notice. The materiality shapes the mood, wouldn't you agree? Editor: Definitely! The process itself – all that protein congealing – adds a layer. Then, think of the sitter, posing perhaps for the first time, or one of few times. Consider the labor too, for both photographer and subject—each stuck in a power relation! It's all bound together with the new mass accessibility to personal photography that began to arise during that time. Curator: I feel the "hand under his arm" conveys a hidden tension, and this stiffness only allows the viewer a one-sided, careful entry point to who the figure might be, or want to be—it creates a mystery to be wondered about. There is even the possible discomfort he has with having his picture taken to consider! Editor: It's intriguing to consider what sort of audience this portrait was crafted for and what meaning it was intended to carry through all these layers. I guess we have now moved to considering photography a medium more of recording but, ultimately, manipulation of presentation too. Curator: Indeed. Reflecting on it all, I am reminded that photographic portraiture of the time also offered those outside nobility or significant monetary fortune a chance at their likeness being shared forward to be thought of later by future peoples. Editor: Precisely—a way to be memorialized. Thinking of it, each print, touched and mounted, carries so many questions embedded into a unique set of considerations beyond purely aesthetics, making for a wonderfully multilayered exploration.