Portret van een man en een vrouw 1875 - 1899

Curator: Here we have “Portret van een man en een vrouw,” a photograph taken sometime between 1875 and 1899 by Jean Baptiste Feilner. Editor: It has a strangely unsettling feel. The composition is very rigid, very posed. Everything fades into that sepia wash... like a forgotten dream. Curator: Quite right. It is indicative of the style of portraiture common at that time. Think of photography as an increasingly democratized means of capturing likeness. What sort of social narratives can we decode? Editor: Note the meticulous framing within the album page itself, all clean lines and elegant borders. It contrasts so sharply with the people it is supposed to elevate. I sense formality pushed almost to the point of suffocation. Look how drained their expressions appear. Curator: Perhaps. Or perhaps they simply represent the conventions of the period. This photograph serves as a visual marker within the larger societal tapestry, doesn't it? The emergence of a rising middle class eager to memorialize themselves, to stake a claim on history itself, is what truly grabs my attention. Editor: Yet it's all about tonal subtlety! See how the softness of her dress melts almost imperceptibly into the backdrop? He’s marginally darker but it’s just light playing around the features. Their shared space becomes almost indistinct. They are almost too carefully rendered. Curator: And yet that rendering itself tells a story. How are notions of bourgeois respectability being communicated through the technology of photography, do you think? The very act of being photographed carried weight, it was a demonstration of elevated status. Editor: Interesting! It just leaves me feeling rather sad. Perhaps it is the color. Or the feeling of these trapped people and captured. Curator: Then it's a great document: beyond aesthetic formalism we have history rendered tangible. Editor: Indeed, more than aesthetic contemplation of color and shape. It evokes feelings and triggers thoughts.