Portret van Louise Pyk 1865 - 1885

Gösta Florman made this portrait of Louise Pyk using photography, a relatively new medium in the 19th century. This image tells us a lot about the sitter's social class. Louise’s dress and hair are very neatly arranged and the books on the table suggest wealth, education, and leisure. Sweden at this time was seeing the rise of industrial capitalism, along with new class divisions and social mobility. The well-to-do wanted to mark themselves as distinct from the working class, and photography offered a means to do this. Studios popped up everywhere as a way of meeting this demand. This small photograph would likely have been placed in a family album, a very common practice in the 19th century. Photographs like this helped families create a public image of themselves. As historians, we can study such images alongside other archival resources like census data, newspapers, and personal letters to gain a richer understanding of Sweden’s social and economic transformations in the late 1800s.