Portret van een onbekende vrouw 1882 - 1885

J. Van Crewel Jeune, a photographer active in Antwerp, made this portrait of an unknown woman using the 19th-century albumen print process. Thin paper was coated with egg white and then with a silver nitrate solution, rendering it light-sensitive. The resulting negative was then contact-printed onto another sheet of albumen paper and developed. This process, while yielding a beautiful sepia tone and fine detail, was also labor-intensive and bound up with emerging capitalist structures. From the preparation of the chemicals to the posing and printing, each stage required expertise and time. The very act of sitting for a portrait became a marker of social status, available to a growing middle class with disposable income. Consider the work involved here: the careful chemistry, the controlled environment of the darkroom, the artistry involved in capturing a likeness. In its own way, this photograph speaks volumes about the changing relationship between labor, leisure, and representation in the late 19th century, and how it was consumed.