La Grande-duchesse De Toscane Et La Duchesse De Madrid 1878

This photograph, by Felix Nadar, captures La Grande-duchesse De Toscane and La Duchesse De Madrid. It's rendered in a now antiquated technique which relied on light-sensitive chemistry, a specialized lens, and a darkened room. Consider the materiality of the subject here: the fabric of their dresses, the finery of their hair, the elaborate studio backdrop. All of this speaks to the careful construction of identity, and presentation of social status. Photography in Nadar's time, though novel, was already deeply entangled with the performance of class, and with burgeoning consumer culture. While photography automated portraiture, which was a time-consuming process, let's not forget that the sitters’ dresses embody the labor of many hands – spinners, weavers, dyers, seamstresses. Nadar's photograph gives us only the image, but the photograph acts as a document to the economic structure in which production of material items and capitalism was happening. By focusing on the processes and labor embedded in this image, we recognize the expanded boundaries of art history, connecting the aesthetic and the economic.