Portret van een baby op een stoel 1878 - 1887

Curator: Ah, there's such a stillness to this image. What strikes you first? Editor: Definitely the baby's expression. That little frown! You can just feel the weight of existence already settling in. Curator: It's quite something, isn’t it? This is a photograph by Charles Binger, entitled "Portret van een baby op een stoel"—Portrait of a baby in a chair, dating from around 1878 to 1887. It's a gelatin silver print. The work sits right now here in the Rijksmuseum. Editor: Gelatin silver prints give that gorgeous tonal range, almost a sepia dreaminess. But framing the image like this, a chubby baby plonked in a fairly grand, ornate chair, feels deliberately ironic. The class implications are really inescapable here, it is a commentary of class distinction. Curator: I can't help thinking of all the *work* it would have taken to get a toddler to sit still like that! A whole production— and then to capture it so beautifully. It must have been such a monumental moment. All that is for, let me be, for example. posterity's sake. A little performance of domesticity, in some ways. But in the studio… or in real life? Editor: Definitely a performance! That's the interesting tension of these early photographic portraits, they're *supposed* to look candid, a slice of life, a document... but they’re so staged. Look at the details; the slightly too-fancy chair. The baby is wearing a very lovely little bracelet. You can sense the hand of power in every gesture. Curator: Power indeed, but also maybe something a little poignant. It is a little sad, no? The sense of these hopes pressed upon a tiny child, these are heavy stones indeed for this child to deal with. Editor: Perhaps. It definitely complicates our readings of family, identity, the creation of histories that seem to stretch and to endure through us. It almost begs a dialogue from those times with our contemporary anxieties regarding power. Curator: Absolutely. There is such depth, such thought put in something seemingly simple. I would say we must also learn how to reflect our today's through the lens of such a captured image. Editor: I think I need to sit with that baby’s gaze for a little longer and just take everything in… there's more there than meets the eye.