[Photo Collage: Girl with Doll] 1870 - 1880

Juan Pedro Chabalgoity’s "Photo Collage: Girl with Doll" is a late nineteenth-century photomontage on a mount measuring 10.5 by 6.3 centimeters. The work is dominated by flat planes of peach, yellow, and white. The figure of a girl holding a doll is strangely cropped against this background. The composition employs a form of collage that was innovative for its time. Chabalgoity destabilizes traditional notions of representation by manipulating the photographic medium, suggesting that truth is not objective but constructed. The varying textures—from the smooth backdrop to the roughly cut-out figures—serve to remind us of the artificiality inherent in photographic representation. The contrast of the girl’s serious expression with the playful medium invites a semiotic reading of childhood and representation. The artist disrupts conventional portraiture by introducing elements of disjunction and artifice. This piece serves not just as a visual artifact but as a philosophical prompt, inviting viewers to question the nature of photographic truth and the cultural codes embedded within images of childhood.