Portret van Augusta Doria before 1900

This is a page from a magazine printed in Brussels, around 1900. You can see how the design reflects the industrialization of the period, especially in the advertisement for Columbia "talking machines." Look closely at the techniques used to make this page. The typography, the crispness of the images, the evenness of the ink – these are all products of industrial processes. Consider the labor involved: from the journalists and editors creating the content, to the typesetters arranging the text, to the machine operators running the printing presses. This magazine is a material expression of early mass media, a harbinger of the 20th century’s culture of consumption and entertainment. Note how even the portrait of Augusta Doria is captured through mechanical reproduction. Her image, like the advertisements, is a commodity, circulated and consumed by a mass audience. This challenges traditional notions of portraiture, where the value lay in the unique hand of the artist. Here, value resides in the ability to disseminate images widely.