Portret van een man met bakkebaarden en een hoge hoed 1855 - 1880

This is Henry Lock’s diminutive portrait of a man with sideburns and a top hat, mounted in an album. Lock worked as a photographer during a time of burgeoning industrialization and shifting social structures. This portrait reflects the conventions of representing middle-class masculinity. The subject’s formal attire, neat grooming, and upright posture all speak to a cultivated, bourgeois identity. He is leaning against an ornate table next to a window, gazing out, his face is turned towards us but his thoughts seem elsewhere. While this pose denotes respectability, it also subtly hints at the sitter's interiority. What does it mean to pose for an image that will be kept as a token of memory, a memento, or even a souvenir? In its quiet way, this portrait opens a window into the hopes and anxieties of a rapidly changing world. It is an intimate glimpse into a desire to be remembered, and into the fragile and fleeting nature of identity itself.