Portret van een meisje 1892 - 1906

This small portrait of a girl was made by Machiel Hendricus Laddé sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century, using photography. Photography, when it was first developed, changed the way people saw themselves. The public role of art was shifting, and portraiture was no longer the domain of the wealthy. Photography democratized the image. Laddé was part of the Dutch Pictorialist movement, he and his contemporaries used photography to emulate painting. They were invested in aesthetic image making, and this photograph seems to want to capture something essential about this young girl, perhaps her entrance into society. To understand Laddé’s work better, we need to know about photography as an emerging art form and the institutional structures that supported pictorialism in the Netherlands. The meaning of this photograph lies in its historical moment.