Portret van een onbekend bruidspaar c. 1870 - 1910

Fotografie Strauss in Rotterdam made this carte-de-visite photograph of an unknown bridal couple sometime in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The image is a fascinating window into the social customs and performance of bourgeois marriage at the time. In this staged shot, we see the couple posing formally in a studio setting, complete with a painted backdrop suggesting a romantic landscape. The bride, seated, is adorned in a pristine white dress, holding a bouquet of flowers, while the groom stands beside her in a dark suit and bow tie. These visual codes reflect the values of respectability and prosperity that were so important to the middle classes of the period. The emerging institution of commercial photography played a crucial role in shaping social rituals. Studios such as Strauss offered standardized portraiture services that allowed ordinary people to participate in practices of representation and commemoration that had previously been limited to the elite. Through careful research into the archives of photography studios and period literature on social customs, we can learn much about the aspirations and self-fashioning of the Dutch middle class during this period of rapid social and economic change.