Portret van een meisje 1888 - 1895

This is a portrait of a girl by Max Büttinghausen, a gelatin silver print, likely made at the end of the nineteenth century. The gelatin silver process was a mainstay of commercial photography for many years. It involves coating a paper base with light-sensitive silver halide crystals, resulting in a monochrome image. The process, simple enough to be industrialized, allowed for mass production of photographs. It offered a relatively inexpensive way to capture and preserve likenesses, democratizing portraiture for a broader segment of society. The very act of creating such a portrait – choosing a backdrop, posing the subject, and meticulously developing the print – reflects a cultural emphasis on preservation and memory, values that were increasingly accessible thanks to industrial advancements in photographic technology.