Portret van Jules Dufaure c. 1873 - 1878

This portrait of Jules Dufaure was created by Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon, a French sculptor and photographer. The photograph is one of many printed in a book titled Galerie Contemporaine. Looking at the image, we see Jules Dufaure, a prominent French statesman, captured in a moment of contemplation. It was made at a time when photography was still a relatively new medium, but was rapidly gaining acceptance as a tool for portraiture and documentation. The Galerie Contemporaine was a project that sought to document prominent figures of the time, reflecting a broader cultural interest in celebrity and public image. What can we learn from the social conditions that shape artistic production? Well, we might consider how the rise of photography impacted traditional portraiture, or the ways in which political figures used images to cultivate a certain image. To understand this work better, we can research 19th-century French photography and political history. Art history shows us that the meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.