Portret van het echtpaar Kieviet-de Jonge 1886 - 1898

Curator: This is "Portret van het echtpaar Kieviet-de Jonge," a photograph taken sometime between 1886 and 1898 by Michiel David Wessels. Editor: The faded sepia tones give it such a ghostly air. The almost blank background intensifies this. It's really compelling in an understated way. Curator: Yes, the stark simplicity really throws their clothing into high relief. Looking at it materially, it is a gelatin silver print which speaks to mass production. This process allowed photography to become far more widespread. It democratized the portrait, no longer just for the elite. Editor: That's so interesting, how it captures that moment of transition. There is the couple—him in a suit and tie, she in what seems a very finely textured dress. They are posing in such a formal, traditional way, and yet they are able to do so, I imagine, much more easily and cheaply than ever before because of its proliferation as a process. Curator: I find myself thinking about the labor. The silver gelatin process requires specific materials and skills. There would have been miners, factory workers making chemicals, not to mention the photographer and his assistants. Each photograph encapsulates a web of material relations. Editor: Definitely. Thinking about it from that angle enriches it beyond just the couple's faces. I see how they are participants within that larger economy, consumers enabled by new means of photographic reproduction, and how their identities were shaped and expressed within these evolving systems of production and consumption. It becomes less about them specifically, and more a moment captured in time and tied directly to production! Curator: Absolutely. Thinking about the means of creation, it brings a broader perspective to this quiet, seemingly simple photograph. Editor: Exactly. I am so grateful for this image that makes us stop to question things such as democratization in photography and what impact it has to those whose photograph are taken.