Standbeeld van Hendrik Tollens, Rotterdam 1860 - 1865

This stereograph of Hendrik Tollens's statue in Rotterdam was made by Pieter Oosterhuis. It captures not just the likeness of a prominent figure, but also the textures of mid-19th century life. Consider the process: a photographic negative, carefully developed, then printed onto albumen paper. This was a cutting-edge technology at the time, somewhere between craft and industrialization. The final result is a mass-produced object, yet it retains an aura of preciousness as a unique record of a particular moment. And look at the statue itself. Stone carving is a laborious, subtractive process. Here, we see it translated into a photograph, a chemical process of light and shadow. The materiality of the statue, its monumentality, is thus subtly undermined by the photograph's capacity for reproduction. In this sense, Oosterhuis's image isn't just a document; it's a commentary on the changing nature of art and labor in an industrial age.