Portret van een onbekende man 1850 - 1900

This photographic portrait of an unknown man was made by Leopold Haase & Co in Cologne, Germany, sometime in the late 19th century. The portrait, with its oval vignette and decorative border, is a product of the burgeoning commercial photography industry. Studios like Haase’s democratized portraiture, offering affordable images to a wider public. The subject’s suit and tie suggest a striving for middle-class respectability. Yet, the anonymity of the sitter highlights a key function of photography at this time: the visual recording of an expanding and increasingly mobile population. Photography studios became institutions that shaped identities and social status. For historians, these images offer a wealth of information, from fashion trends and social mobility to the development of photographic technology and the rise of consumer culture. By studying studio records, census data, and other archival material, we can begin to reconstruct the lives and stories behind these anonymous faces.