Portret van Jeanne Renee en Honorine Victorine Louise Lebrun

This portrait of Jeanne Renee and Honorine Victorine Louise Lebrun was produced by L. Muller & Rault using the photographic technique of their time. The image tells us much about the social conventions surrounding childhood in late 19th-century France. Note the girls’ formal dresses, which mimic adult fashions, and their carefully styled hair. The indoor setting, complete with draped furniture and a visible clock, speaks to a bourgeois domesticity and an awareness of social status. Photographic portraits like these were becoming increasingly accessible to the middle classes. They reflect a desire to document family life and to project an image of respectability. This seemingly simple photograph thus reveals the values and aspirations of a particular social class at a specific historical moment. Understanding such images requires that we delve into archives and historical sources to uncover the social context and cultural meanings embedded within them.