Portret van een man met baard c. 1866 - 1900

Curator: What strikes me immediately is the stillness of this photograph; a calm and measured quality emanating from this stern looking man. Editor: Calm yes, but perhaps that's deceptive. I find it rather haunting, ghostly even. The restricted tonal range of the gelatin-silver print on paper seems to leach the subject of vibrancy, or perhaps that’s simply time itself at work. Curator: Perhaps a bit of both. This is ‘Portret van een man met baard’, or 'Portrait of a Man with a Beard', a work by Johan Christiaan Reesinck, dating back to sometime between 1866 and 1900. That ghostly quality may stem partly from what photography represented at that time. For the burgeoning middle class, these portraits provided an almost spectral form of ancestor worship and memory making. Editor: Absolutely, though it’s key to remember that the wet collodion and later gelatin silver processes involved a specific labour and a careful use of materials. The sitter here is dressed formally: the dark suit, neatly tied bow tie, even that trimmed beard…he is making a deliberate presentation of himself for posterity, investing not just money but also time in his self-image. This photograph becomes an artifact of class aspiration. Curator: Agreed. The rigid pose, and the almost uniform grey tone that blankets the figure, does seem to subdue his individuality under the weight of social convention. I find myself wondering what narrative he was hoping to construct with this image. His brow seems somewhat furrowed and I am quite interested in what the set of his jaw signifies. Editor: While those formal conventions constrain the portrayal, paradoxically they make this piece so revealing of its time. The limited range of photographic printing, for instance, speaks volumes about the evolution of the technology and of this artist’s use of the technology during a transformative moment in media history. Curator: Indeed. The cultural weight and symbolic import contained within this small rectangular image, originally no bigger than a calling card, really captures an entire era. Editor: And to me it illuminates the material conditions that have shaped it. A tiny artefact revealing a moment in technological advancement and its impact on society.