"Charra" (Salamanca)

Vintage contact print developed from a glass negative, adhered to a secondary support surface and tinted with watercolours. It shows a woman in traditional charra costume posing in an interior before a false landscape. These types of photographs often used props, like the structure on which the subject is leaning and the backdrop. Hand-colouring photographs was standard procedure from the mid-19th century, as existing photographic techniques could only produce monochrome images. Although Jean Laurent patented a procedure for colouring photographic prints around 1855, not without a few legal difficulties, the “popular types” series held in the MAN were hand-tinted with watercolours.
This image was presented at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris alongside the other photos of popular types that Laurent had taken on the occasion of the royal wedding between Alfonso XII and Mercedes of Orléans, and a third set of pictures on the same theme taken in outdoor settings.