Portret van een meisje, staand bij een bidstoel 1860 - 1880

This is a photograph made by A. Talbot, portraying a girl standing by a prie-dieu, or prayer desk. Consider the materiality of this image. It is not painted, but chemically produced. Think about the social context of photography in the 19th century, with people wanting to immortalize their images. The amount of work involved in portraiture now shifted to new methods and techniques, and thus, what it meant to memorialize someone shifted too. There is a tension that underlies photography, a chemical mechanical process that creates an image to be replicated versus older methods of painting by hand. This image exists because of industrial processes. Understanding photography's place in an expanding repertoire of visual techniques illuminates how art both reflects and shapes societal changes. It challenges our notions of artistic skill, labor, and the very essence of representation.