Portret van een onbekend kind bij een stoel 1865 - 1885

Palmer Descamps made this photographic portrait of an unknown child, likely sometime in the 1870s in the town of Courtrai, Belgium. Photography in this era was becoming more accessible to the middle classes, but it still carried connotations of status and formality. This child, posed beside an ornate chair, embodies those values. Note the carefully arranged clothing and the child’s reserved expression. Such details tell us about the self-conscious construction of identity through photographic portraiture. Who was this child? What was their family's status that they could afford such an image? Genealogical records might help us to understand this image better. The history of photography as a technology and a social practice is an important part of the story of this carefully posed portrait.