Portret van een onbekende man c. 1862 - 1899

Curator: Here at the Rijksmuseum, we're standing before "Portret van een onbekende man," a gelatin silver print, probably dating from the 1860s through the 1890s. It's an example of portrait photography from Willem Gerhardus Kuijer. Editor: It strikes me as a very earnest portrait, but there's also a slight melancholy to it. The sepia tones contribute to this mood, suggesting a man captured in a fleeting moment, almost lost to time. Curator: That melancholy, I think, speaks to the era. The mid-to-late 19th century was a period of immense social upheaval, scientific advancement but also loss with industrialization altering familiar life ways forever. Photography itself was relatively new, a means of memorializing the individual against this backdrop of change, but primarily available to a bourgeois. How does the sitter seem positioned to you? Editor: Visually, the portrait feels like it’s consciously referencing painting – note the formal wear and that slightly dreamy gaze. It's interesting how quickly photography tried to elevate itself by mimicking established artistic conventions. This creates its own iconography of status, doesn’t it? Curator: Absolutely, this portrait also plays into contemporary ideals of masculinity in particular. We can read a quiet strength but also restraint within this portrait, that may speak to both a personal affect but also a performative gender expression given the constraints of social codes in this historical moment. Editor: Thinking of how this image would have been experienced, perhaps as a memento, is poignant. The man, forever preserved in this one pose, a tiny piece of personal history now available for viewing at any given moment for countless numbers of people. It carries a certain power. Curator: Ultimately, in looking at this piece, it makes us question how photography and social performances have evolved while asking if those historical shifts actually break from earlier periods at all. It reveals so many of our complicated attitudes towards social identity across history. Editor: Yes, a single image speaking volumes, encouraging a dialogue between the personal, the social, and the historical. It causes us to wonder who might he be, this unknown man, whose face connects us across time.