Kip before 1901

Curator: This fascinating gelatin-silver print, titled "Kip," is attributed to Ida von Ceumern and dates to before 1901. There's a beautiful sense of the past within it, don’t you think? Editor: It looks aged but… there's also something almost startlingly crisp about it. Looking at the surface of the photographic print, and the page it is on, the materials contrast old world and modern printing practices and technologies. The photographic image is presented on the coated paper with text on the adjacent page, a technological and artistic dialogue is instantly presented. Curator: Precisely! Consider the institutional history—this wasn't conceived as a stand-alone artwork, but as an element *within* a larger published document. It gives a window into late 19th-century photography and its reception in relation to printed material. Editor: Thinking about production, these early photographic prints involved elaborate processes. Silver gelatin prints such as this show evidence of the materials impacting the outcome; the hand of the photographer and printer is almost directly on the final image and on its materiality. It isn't just the "what" of the image—the hen and its surroundings—but also the "how" that matters. Curator: The subject matter is quite telling, isn't it? Why photograph a hen pecking at the ground? Ceumern’s work can be seen as a kind of commentary on domesticity and the natural world through a specific photographic lens of the period, while also informing more specifically scientific practices or publications around that time. What place did this photography play in the contemporary cultural world? Editor: Indeed! I imagine the work has involved extensive labor to be produced in the period, starting from the hen’s feed to its publishing format, with considerable resources of labor involved. And where has the consumption of this material and art taken place across different audiences? Curator: Absolutely, it all connects! And so, the seemingly simple subject of a hen leads us to ponder complex layers of history, artistry, and labor. Editor: I agree completely, it's impressive how a hen foraging and a publication like this both feed our understanding about process, meaning, material and labour!