Portret van Alfred Meissner 1836 - 1880

Curator: Gazing upon this engraving, "Portret van Alfred Meissner," likely rendered between 1836 and 1880 by Conrad Friedrich Merckel, one feels an immediate sense of faded elegance, doesn't one? The way the image emerges so softly from the ground... Editor: Absolutely, it's ghostly in a way, like a photograph fading. The meticulous craft that went into making this, laboriously incising the plate – it's amazing when you consider this was reproduced on a mass scale. I'm interested in the implications for making and consumption that print-making enables. Curator: There's something almost mournful in Meissner's gaze, though, don't you think? A profound interiority, perhaps hinting at the societal pressures and expectations that surrounded someone of his stature. Or perhaps he's just wondering when tea time is... Editor: It’s the materiality of the lines I keep coming back to; that relentless action of transferring ink onto paper so the burgeoning middle class could access an image of who was important at the time. Even that signature; it’s part of the manufacturing, and is just another graphic element. Curator: I like to imagine the artist grappling with capturing Meissner's very essence—translating the fleeting moments of a human spirit onto this rigid, reproducible form. As an artist, the sheer limitations become the most freeing invitation... What truths are allowed to come forward within these constraints? Editor: Right, those restrictions. I wonder what sort of training Merckel underwent? Engraving tools aren't cheap, the paper stock must be archival. This wasn't casual, like a felt-tip scribble in a sketchbook; It was intended as a record, both visually and physically. Curator: And now, across all of those intervening decades, the echo of those original choices still resonates in every delicate line. To experience the world anew simply by engaging with materials…that feels like something precious we must treasure, for those glimpses of timeless connection. Editor: It definitely makes you think. The subtle gray scales alone have this impact. Makes one imagine the person in question and this print floating along as relics of production and process through various socio-economical and ideological epochs.