Les dernieres 1860s

Curator: This is "Les dernieres," a gelatin silver print from the 1860s, made by Pierre-Louis Pierson, held here at the Metropolitan Museum. It's a stunning example of his portraiture during the Second Empire. Editor: It's intensely melancholic, isn’t it? All that draped fabric and heavy lace… the almost ghostly veil. She feels utterly consumed by shadow, as if she’s fading into history right before our eyes. Curator: Absolutely. Pierson became known for his opulent, sometimes theatrical, photographs, particularly those featuring the Countess de Castiglione. This work reveals her taste and status. I find the level of detail in the lace astonishing, considering the photographic technology of the time. Consider the time needed to produce just one print with such clarity. Editor: It does make you wonder about the labor involved in both its creation, and in the making of that incredible gown, every stitch speaking to a different craft. She carries this incredible weight; social expectations but also physical ones in those skirts. What I see, beyond all that fashionable presentation, is such a profoundly vulnerable gaze peering from behind the veil. It's heartbreaking, really. Curator: And the material conditions underlying such performance and display, as you noted: The textile production in the 1860s relied on a vast network of labor. This intersects with artistic production. Here photography also becomes the record, archive of social inequality, as much as high style. Editor: I see the romance and drama but through her veiled eyes I get this sense of premonition and disillusionment, as though all the finery and ritual are merely hollow echoes. I can imagine her watching revolutions begin, watching society transform, just from the edges. I can just imagine! Curator: So beautifully put. Looking at “Les dernieres” what's compelling is how the social reality shapes even our emotional response to a photograph taken so long ago. Editor: Yes, and from such a controlled and mediated portrait, a person appears! How's that for some strange alchemy?