Portret van een vrouw, staand bij een kinderwagen met daarin een baby 1882 - 1890

Jacques Chits made this small photographic print of a woman and child sometime in the late 19th century. The photographic process itself is key to understanding this image. Light-sensitive chemicals applied to a paper or glass surface captured a fleeting moment in time. In this case, the material reality of photography is especially poignant, as the portrait seems to capture a servant and her charge. Consider the social dynamics at play: the family who commissioned the photo, the photographer who operated the technology, and the woman who likely labored in their home. The photograph flattens these relationships, freezing them in a single composition. This small image becomes a window into the complex intersection of labor, class, and representation in the 19th century. It reminds us that even seemingly simple images are the product of specific social and economic forces, encoded in the very materials and making of the photograph itself.