Fotoreproductie van een foto, voorstellende een zelfportret van Robert Cornelius before 1905

Curator: Here we have a photomechanical print that reproduces an early self-portrait by Robert Cornelius, likely taken before 1905. It’s part of a book, if you look closely. Editor: It has such a fragile, haunted feel. I wonder about the person depicted within. It's like looking at a ghost trying to materialize on the page, almost an attempt to hold on to a passing moment. Curator: Considering its status as a reproduction within a book, we should consider this as a commodity – reproducible and replicable within an emerging mass media landscape. Cornelius would not have seen this dissemination. Editor: That takes some of the mystique away, in a way, doesn’t it? It also introduces the potential for altered interpretation. But maybe even with those reproductions, people still connect with the idea of identity being captured, however many times removed. Curator: That makes me think about labour: the process of making it, publishing it, and the historical labor it represents. What were the social conditions allowing that particular reproduction to be made? Editor: I also sense the artist reaching for something… maybe a permanent presence, a sort of proof of existence in an era where such a thing felt truly radical. The vulnerability on his face feels especially striking. Curator: I am reminded, that photography like this helped to produce notions of idealization and classification that in time helped to structure hierarchical labor processes of photographic labor and, subsequently, artistic valuation. Editor: I feel myself gravitating back to that lone individual within. Something about that intense stare really grounds us. He managed to pierce through all that materiality. Curator: So we have come full circle; starting with a focus on material processes but perhaps also reflecting on the enduring power of a reproduced image and the labour it reflects. Editor: Yes. That moment captured, even at several removes, retains its original poignancy, which seems to resist any reduction to purely material components.