Fotoreproductie van een geschilderd portret van generaal Henri Gatien Bertrand door Paul Delaroche before 1858

This is a photographic reproduction by Robert Jefferson Bingham of a painted portrait of General Henri Gatien Bertrand by Paul Delaroche. What's interesting here is the layering of processes. Bingham was part of a generation that witnessed photography's rise. Early photography was often seen as a threat to painting, but here, it’s used to document and disseminate it. The photograph, rendered in tones of grey, flattens the original painting’s texture, yet also makes it reproducible on a mass scale. Consider the labor involved. The original portrait required the skilled hand of Delaroche, but Bingham’s photograph relied on a collaboration between human skill and technology, using chemical processes to fix an image onto paper. This process, tied to the rise of industrial capitalism, made art more accessible, but also changed its status, blurring the lines between original and copy. By focusing on the intersections of these techniques, we can appreciate how photography transformed our relationship with art and portraiture in the 19th century.