[Standing Female Nude] 1860 - 1861

Curator: Look, here's "Standing Female Nude," a photograph taken between 1860 and 1861 by Nadar. Editor: My first thought is that there's an undeniable vulnerability about this piece. The soft lighting, the pose, everything feels incredibly intimate. Curator: It's interesting that you pick up on that. Nadar was pushing the boundaries of photography as art, and these nudes are…complicated. We see the influence of Romanticism here in the deliberate evocation of mood. Consider the compositional choices: the archway framing her, the way the drapery pools at her feet. Do you see a kind of…stagecraft at play? Editor: Definitely. I think the staging almost contradicts the intimacy, in a strange way. Covering the model's face really allows us to read her form purely as a subject. Curator: The question is, a subject of what, or whom? What do you think that hand covering her face communicates? Editor: Well, it feels like modesty, maybe, or a desire for anonymity. There's an intentional removal of individual identity that I think is actually very revealing about how women were seen in this era. Do you agree? Curator: Absolutely. There's a tension here that makes it so compelling. He is showing and concealing at once! Plus, we cannot discard Nadar's history of Portraiture and caricature. Can we argue, in turn, if he made her, her pose, but even her flesh into some sort of personal, subjective statement? Editor: It makes you wonder about her own agency in this. It is quite stunning to see Nadar capture this and really get at it on film so clearly. It feels more honest and raw than idealized paintings from that period. It all still feels fresh, even after so long. Curator: Right! Exactly that. We keep revisiting similar questions in diverse aesthetic shapes. This gelatin silver print at the Met is part of an ongoing conversation. It offers no simple answer about representation, so hopefully viewers walk away still asking the very questions it presents.