Portret van een staand meisje in haar bed 1887 - 1899

Curator: We're looking at a gelatin silver print by G. Watmough Webster, "Portret van een staand meisje in haar bed", which translates to "Portrait of a Standing Girl in her Bed", made sometime between 1887 and 1899. What are your first thoughts? Editor: I'm immediately drawn to the light and how soft it is, and how the composition centres the subject with such clarity in this intimate domestic scene. There’s a dreamy, ethereal quality to it. It has a distinct early pictorialism aesthetic. Curator: Absolutely. The hazy focus is typical of pictorialism. It's important to remember gelatin silver prints were the workhorses of late 19th-century photography, known for their reproducibility. This allowed Webster's image to reach a broad audience through publications, like the volume where we find it reproduced. Editor: And the mass dissemination of the work influences my reading. Given its likely wide distribution, does the image present itself less as a unique artistic statement and more as a commercially accessible piece aimed at eliciting sentimental responses? Curator: That’s a fair question. Pictorialism was often about elevating photography to the level of "high art." By using soft focus and techniques to mimic painting, artists like Webster were actively challenging the idea that photography was simply a mechanical recording of reality. He used the technology to emphasize form and elicit feeling. It’s fascinating how photography became the art medium in response to mechanization, rather than simply a reflection of it. Editor: Speaking of that challenge, consider how the bed frame bisects the composition, its rigidity juxtaposed with the girl’s soft form and dress. The geometric bed acts as a stark reminder of the industrialized world pushing into domestic space. And do we take note of the title, she is standing next to her bed... Is this tension, between the industrial and intimate a conscious statement by the artist, or a by-product of social reality? Curator: I think it is conscious. Webster presents the moment of awakening, framed within the expanding access to photographic media and equipment as he comments on it. And even if these tones aren’t explicitly referenced in documentation about the piece or artist, looking at this photograph can remind us how deeply embedded these new tensions are within everyday practices and our modes of documentation of them. Editor: Very insightful. Seeing this piece through that lens adds so much richness to an image that, at first glance, seems like a sweet portrait. Curator: Indeed.