Daniel Nyblin’s photographic negatives of paintings

Daniel Nyblin (1856–1923) was one of the leading  photographers in Finland during the turn of the nineteenth century. Known for his portraits,  his photographic oeuvre also comprised  landscapes and townscapes.  Nyblin  photographed artworks and these negatives known as The Nyblin collection which is owned by the Finnish National Gallery.

I’m interested in the haunting intermedial quality of these negatives in which we are drawn to the negative as a kind of abstracted photographic representation and initially assume the photographs are of actual people or landscapes.  There is then a kind of disorientation as it becomes clear that these are paintings, often sitting on domestic furniture orstill on the easel.