Portret van een onbekende man 1885 - 1906

This is a portrait of an unknown man, produced by W.G. Kuijer & Zonen in Amsterdam, using photographic techniques. Photography, even from its outset, represented a shift in the creation of portraits, from unique handmade images to reproducible works. Consider the chemistry involved: light-sensitive materials, precisely mixed and applied, capturing an image through a lens in a controlled chemical process. This was industrialization applied to artmaking, with studios like Kuijer democratizing portraiture. Photographers ran businesses, requiring them to be entrepreneurial; a far cry from the solitary artist myth. These studios were workplaces. It would be interesting to consider how many people were involved in the creation of this image, including the manual labor of creating, developing and printing the photograph. By embracing materials and processes, we appreciate photography not just for its aesthetic qualities, but for its role in reshaping artistic production and consumption.