Personen met een walgende gelaatsuitdrukking before 1874

Curator: We are looking at "Personen met een walgende gelaatsuitdrukking," which translates to "People with a disgusted facial expression." It's an anonymous print made before 1874, employing gelatin silver print and photography. Editor: Disgust is certainly the operative word. I find this collection of images deeply unsettling, with its strange compositions and dated aesthetic. Curator: As a genre painting, it's more clinical than aesthetic. Consider how photography was evolving then. This print, bound within a book, examines emotions. Editor: I see this differently. The series feels like a commentary on marginalized identities. Look at the positioning of the woman in the top image versus the older, bearded men below. Is there a power dynamic being visualized here? Is the disgust in their faces directed towards others or reflections of their internal turmoil as it relates to living within the context of repressive gender or class dynamics? Curator: That is reading in quite a lot that I am unsure the photographs warrant. We're provided with specific expressions that M. Rejlander identified, which serve as illustrations. Editor: Precisely! Illustration *within* a social context! By studying these "expressions," this work participates in the practice of creating labels. How do labels inform treatment and agency? Curator: We seem to have widely different ways of perceiving this collection of portraits. I see formal scientific observation, and you read social commentary on identities. Editor: Well, to me, you can’t divorce observation from the social conditions that enable and direct the lens and informs meaning. These aren't objective studies—they participate in creating, reinforcing, and reifying social constructs, regardless of the author's conscious intent.