Grote verhuiswagen wordt geladen in een straat 1830

Victor Adam made this lithograph of a large moving van being loaded in a street. Lithography involves drawing on a flat stone with a greasy crayon, then treating the stone so that ink adheres only to the drawn areas. It's a printmaking process, that democratizes image making, allowing for multiple copies to be made relatively easily, spreading imagery far and wide. Consider the scene itself – all the workers scurrying to load the van. The print captures a moment of upheaval, of transition. The very process of lithography mirrors this, translating a scene into a reproducible image, disseminating it to a wider audience. Notice the contrast between the detailed rendering of the figures and the more schematic depiction of the buildings. This directs our attention to the human activity, to the labor involved in moving – it is all rendered in shades of grey on the flat surface. The lithograph invites us to consider not only the image itself but the means of its production, and how this intersects with the depiction of labor and movement.