Portret van een man c. 1865 - 1880

This portrait of a man was made by Christaan Marcussen sometime in the mid-19th century. The image is a photograph, a process that, at the time, would have been relatively novel. The tonal range is limited; the texture of the paper support is visible. Inherent in the photographic process is the indexical relationship to reality, which is to say that the image bears a direct trace of the person represented. Yet this is not a straightforward transcription of the sitter’s appearance. The pose is studied; the lighting is carefully managed. Consider too the labor involved in the making of this object, the application of the chemicals, the precise timing required to produce a legible image. The rise of photography coincided with increasing industrialization, allowing for a new kind of affordable portraiture. Photographs like this reflect a wider social shift, in which the traditional skills of painting gave way to a new mechanically produced form of image-making. Photography, like many forms of craft, collapses traditional hierarchies of artistic skill.