Portret van een man bij een tafel met boek 1857 - 1864

Curator: Oh, there's a contemplative air to this daguerreotype; almost melancholic. The man seems caught in a moment of quiet contemplation. Editor: This is "Portret van een man bij een tafel met boek," created sometime between 1857 and 1864. What we are looking at here is not just a portrait, but a slice of bourgeois life carefully captured in photographic form by Wegner & Mottu, who had a keen eye on social representation. Curator: Slice is the right word! The man with a book--the very image of bourgeois respectability. And he’s rather stylish for it. I get the sense he knows he's being immortalized, which, of course, puts one on one's best behaviour, doesn't it? I wonder what his own relationship to books and knowledge actually was. Did he love them, or was it a prop? Editor: These early photographic portraits served very specific purposes. Daguerreotypes were luxury objects, initially displayed in the home to project status and solidify familial memory. And because they required long exposure times, there was no escaping the fact that getting one's picture taken was itself a socio-economic event. Curator: Yes, but what strikes me now is the patina, that faded amber glow that time gives. It’s the visual equivalent of memory itself. The fragility of the image adds an emotional weight that would have been very different in 1860. He's not a man frozen in amber; the whole scene is amber. Editor: Indeed, that amber tone, as well as the style of presentation in this ornamental border suggests that this portrait existed within an album. Looking at the larger cultural function of these albums within family structures offers insight into victorian social constructs of respectability and private life. And you see such class aspirations embodied so plainly in his confident pose and surroundings! Curator: It makes me think about all the unseen hands that went into creating it – from growing and weaving the fabrics, to grinding the lenses...And the knowledge held by Wegner & Mottu...We have our faces blasted across screens and hard drives; and here is one silvered on glass. Editor: And considered from an even wider angle, consider the power of visual imagery in disseminating new class and aesthetic ideals among a growing middle class; consider its connection to colonialism...These portraits do so much cultural work. Curator: All from one face! That's art isn't it: the small containing the immeasurable? Editor: It really is! Now, to the next treasure.