Portret van een onbekend persoon before 1900

This photogravure was made by Fred Holland Day, an American photographer known for his pictorialist style. The image is printed on paper using a labor-intensive process that combines photography and intaglio printmaking. To create a photogravure, a copper plate is coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue, exposed to a photographic negative, and then etched. The varying depths of the etched areas hold ink, which is then transferred to paper under high pressure, resulting in a print with rich tonal range and fine detail. Holland Day and other pictorialist photographers saw this kind of approach as a way of reasserting the artist’s hand in the photographic process. They also made a point of using unconventional subjects – such as a Day’s famous series of himself as Christ – to further differentiate their work from purely commercial portraiture. Consider the immense amount of work involved in producing a photogravure, as it is a testament to Day's commitment to photography as a fine art.