Portret van een jonge vrouw 1861 - 1874

Editor: Here we have a portrait of a young woman, created sometime between 1861 and 1874 by Albert Greiner. It's a gelatin silver print, housed in an ornate, perhaps handmade album. It feels very…staged. What can you tell me about this image? Curator: Let's consider the labor involved here. This isn't just a photograph; it's a material object. The gelatin silver print itself required specific chemical processes, specialized labor. And then it’s placed inside a presentation album, which denotes a particular level of value ascribed to the sitter, the object, and the act of portraiture. Do you think that has some class implications? Editor: Definitely. I imagine getting a portrait like this taken would have been quite a financial undertaking. How would access to that technology dictate who was and was not remembered visually? Curator: Exactly! Think about the materials – the silver, the gelatin, the paper, where did they come from, and under what labor conditions were they produced? The manufacture of these photographs themselves was a developing industry, enmeshed with global trade networks. What does this imply when thinking about what an artwork meant for a family from a particular class during the Industrial Revolution? Editor: So the image itself becomes a signifier, pointing towards certain industrial processes and also specific class positions. It’s no longer *just* a portrait of a woman, but rather an intersection of industrial progress, artistic practice, and socio-economic display. Curator: Precisely. Examining the means of production here lets us question the inherent values within this historical depiction. Editor: This makes me think about portraits in a completely different way! Instead of just looking at the face, I can now think of them as artifacts.