Portret van een jonge vrouw c. 1900 - 1930

Editor: Here we have Bernard Eilers's "Portret van een jonge vrouw," a gelatin-silver print likely created between 1900 and 1930. There's something incredibly gentle and soft about this portrait; it seems very intimate. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Well, its intimacy speaks volumes when we consider its context. The pictorialist movement, to which this work belongs, directly challenged the increasing industrialisation of photography, seeking to imbue it with artistic sensibility and thus raising it to the fine art status. Editor: So it's a bit more than just a photograph? Curator: Precisely! And that very ambition must be discussed under intersectional lights: think about who gets to be considered an artist at the time. Eilers and others are essentially fighting for artistic legitimacy, but who is defining it, and who gets to access that definition? Looking at this young woman, the soft focus lens renders a quiet vulnerability but at the same time creates a very specific representation of feminine beauty. How complicit, do you think, photography of the time could be, in either reinforcing or challenging existing beauty ideals? Editor: That’s a good point; it makes you wonder what choices are made in order to enter into the established art world versus challenging it... Curator: Exactly. How do we understand an artwork’s subtle dance between conforming and rebelling against gender and other intersectional norms? Editor: That’s given me a lot to consider – the artwork, the artist and the era – as interconnected agents defining art. Curator: Absolutely! Art always reflects the society and its values. Thank you.