Portret van een onbekende oude man met baard 1873 - 1885

This carte-de-visite, or visiting card, depicts an unknown bearded gentleman and was made by the photographer Walery. The albumen print, created through a meticulous process involving coating paper with egg white and silver nitrate, gives the photograph its distinctive sepia tone and delicate surface. The laborious nature of the process, involving multiple stages of coating, sensitizing, exposing, and developing, meant that early photography was very much about skilled labour. It was also about chemistry, and the way that light interacts with material. Small photographs like these were very popular in the mid-19th century, when the technology became cheaper and more accessible. But the production of these objects still depended on workers who were often not given their due. It is important to remember this, as we look at the final image. What we might at first think of as a simple portrait is in fact the result of many hands, and minds.