Portret van een vrouw 1862 - 1899

This small photographic portrait of a woman was made by Willem Gerhardus Kuijer in the late nineteenth century. The photographic process was still relatively new at this time, and it involved a complex series of chemical and mechanical steps. Consider the way the image would have been made: a glass plate coated with light-sensitive emulsion, exposed in a camera, then developed and printed. It's a far cry from our digital snapshots. The tonal range is subtle, almost monochromatic. The texture of the print itself, mounted on card, gives it a tactile presence. Photography, with its inherent reproducibility, democratized portraiture, but it also introduced new forms of labor, from the production of chemicals and equipment to the operation of studios. Thinking about the material and social context of this photograph allows us to appreciate it as more than just an image, it becomes a document of a particular moment in the history of technology, labor, and representation.