Woman before a Mirror

Frau vor dem Spiegel (Woman before a Mirror, 1906) is a contemplative figure study in gum bichromate acquired by the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, where it stands as a classic specimen of Dr. Heinrich Kühn's mature command of the dichromate-pigment medium. The sitter, posed in front of an interior mirror, is rendered with the painterly diffusion and tonal weight that Kühn extracted from successive gum coats — each layer adding density, color, and surface to the previous one, in a process that effectively allowed photography to assume the chromatic logic of painting. The motif of the woman at the mirror was a signature interior subject for Kühn alongside related works such as Girl with Mirror (1906) held at the Library of Congress in Washington, the two prints framing the same compositional family across collections. Dr. Heinrich Kühn (1866-1944), Austrian-German pictorialist trained as a physician, settled in Innsbruck in 1888 and co-led the Wiener Kleeblatt (Vienna Trifolium) with Hans Watzek and Hugo Henneberg. A close correspondent of Alfred Stieglitz, who published him in Camera Work pl. 18 (1905) and pl. 33 (1911), and of Edward Steichen, Kühn invented the Platingummidruck (gum-over-platinum) process and was among the first European photographers to adopt the Lumière Autochrome in 1907. His models were drawn almost exclusively from his domestic circle: his children Hans, Walter, Edeltrude, and Lotte, and the family governess Mary Warner. Process Transposition Maison Picturale: Kühn's gum bichromate is transposed at the Maison Picturale Paris atelier via Aquaprint MP, the non-toxic Vision Picturale reformulation, which preserves the multi-layer painterly logic of Frau vor dem Spiegel without the historical dichromate hazard. Kühn entered the public domain in 2015.

Reference file : Wikimedia Commons / Städel Museum (Public Domain)