Groepsportret van drie meisjes bij een man, mogelijk een piloot 1911 - 1916

Curator: This photogravure, dated circa 1911-1916, presents a group portrait of three girls surrounding a man, possibly a pilot. It's an intriguing piece from an anonymous hand, capturing a moment in time with remarkable clarity. Editor: My first impression is one of intriguing tenderness. There’s a playfulness evident as the young women seem to be almost crowning the seated man with his cap. You can feel the textured fibers in this old photographic print – almost palpable. Curator: Yes, I’m drawn to the social dynamic here. It feels like a constructed image, intended for public display or perhaps as a gift. We see the presentation of the pilot figure—potentially idealized in this historical context where aviation was so novel—through a loving familial lens. Editor: Agreed. Look at how they are rendered. There is that almost-theatrical backdrop hinting at landscape versus this very direct process of a camera. We can sense all of this material staging – the way the subjects arranged themselves for the image and all of the labor involved in printing it. I’m keen to think through all these layers and meanings around work – image labor! Curator: Considering the likely date, this photo offers insight into shifting societal values around aviation, especially military service—was there any particular public image attached to these professions or public services at that moment in history and could they become some of those public and cultural heroic ideals for young ladies at this historical moment? What sort of material expressions became more central to everyday cultural life during the first world war? Editor: The stark realism achieved through the photogravure method is also important. While realism might point to that desire to capture something "authentically," it also points out what technologies enable particular visual economies. Think through materiality! – everything here involved complex chemical and physical transformations. Silver nitrate, exposure times. In sum, capturing and sharing family legacy! Curator: Thinking about realism brings us back to consider the context and audience. I do find this piece captivating—revealing those more profound social constructions via what is seemingly something so domestic in image making—how we frame our realities through visual documentation of people at large. Editor: Precisely. Its charm isn’t just the faces looking back at us from across time. Instead the photographic process – the material image, the means through which that scene of labor becomes captured – asks the viewers, as well, what types of future might we want? That remains what intrigues me the most.