Inwoners van Umm Qais, Jordanië 1898

This photograph, "Inwoners van Umm Qais, Jordanië," was captured by Johannes Lodewijk Heldring, likely in the late 19th or early 20th century. It's an albumen print, a process involving coating paper with egg white and silver nitrate, then exposing it to light through a negative. The sepia tones speak to the material's sensitivity to light and the specific chemical reactions involved. But beyond its aesthetic qualities, the photograph also acts as a kind of technology. Heldring used this relatively new medium to document the inhabitants of Umm Qais, framing them for a European audience. Photography, here, is a tool of observation and perhaps even classification. Consider the labor involved, too: not just Heldring's in taking and processing the image, but also the labor of those portrayed, now fixed in time through this particular photochemical process. In this way, the image raises important questions about the politics of representation and the exchange between observer and observed.