Art
This photograph, made around 1871, shows a young woman from Alsace, a region in eastern France. Such portraits were treasured family keepsakes—affordable ways for ordinary people to preserve the faces of loved ones and mark important moments in their lives.
Art · Full story
She sits in the photographer's studio, dressed in her finest clothes. The camera fixes her gaze, serious and direct. In a few moments, this instant will be frozen forever—a gift to send to relatives, a proof that she existed, looked this way, mattered enough to remember.
Reflect
What moments in your own family's life do you most wish you had a photograph of?