Voorgevel van de Vleeshal aan de Grote Markt in Haarlem

Andries Jager made this photograph of the Vleeshal in Haarlem using a camera and darkroom chemistry, sometime in the late 19th century. The photographic process itself is critical to understanding this image. Jager would have used a large format camera with a glass plate negative, coated with a light-sensitive emulsion. After exposure, the plate was developed in a darkroom, using a complex chemical process to reveal the image. The final print, like the one we see here, would have been made by contact printing the negative onto photographic paper. Consider the labor involved: from the preparation of the photographic materials, to the careful composition of the shot, to the meticulous darkroom work. Photography in this era was not the instantaneous process we know today, it required a great amount of skill. This photograph should make us think about the intersection of craft, science, and labor in the 19th century, before photography became fully industrialized.