Justine Friederike Esselbrügge (1816-1885)

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Justine Friederike Esselbrügge, 1816-1885, married Hilgemann, as a pubescent girl. Her right breast shows through her diaphanous dress. It is torn above her left breast, but that breast is not exposed since it is covered by some black undergarment which extends from left to right up to the area above her right breast.
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Justine Friederike Esselbrügge, 1816-1885, married Hilgemann, as a lady. The dress is blue velvet and her hair is in a bun. This is the photograph of a painting. The original painting is now (2002) in the possession of Britta Bung (married Horz) in Bonn.		Justine Friederike Esselbrügge with medallion.
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Klaus Bung comments in 2002: We still have not found any documents about this family. They appear to have been well off. The paintings cannot have been cheap, unless the painter was a member of the family. A number of related paintings exist (sisters or close relatives of Justine Friederike?). They are said to be distributed in the present Hantelmann clan. (Ask Maila Hantelmann, Wohlde near Husum, to try to locate them and get colour photographs of them for this archive! ???)

What we have here are photographs of the paintings. We do not know when these photographs were made. Photography was invented in the 1830s.

The fact that young Justine's left breast is showing on the painting is curious (in a bourgeois family), even though it is a significant attribute of a girl of her age.

Klaus Bung remembers an experience during one of his trips to the Philippines (ca. 1969). In a little village near the city of Naga, Province of Bikol, he met a photographer, Mr Parapina. It was the time of oil shortage (OPEC action), oil and electricity was scarce and Mr Parapina had adjusted himself.

He had a darkroom whose red light came through a hole in the wall, over which he had nailed a piece of thick red plastic from an oil barrel. His enlarger did not have a bulb, but there was a hole in the roof of the dark room through which the sun shone direction into the enlarger's lens. He 'switched the light on and off' by covering the hole with a piece of wood.

Regular clients of Mr Parapina were rich families in Naga. He had to photograph their daughters, aged 20 or so, in the nude. The purpose was very coldly stated by the parents: 'to preserve an image of their beauty for their old age and for posterity'.

However, morality and respectability were maintained by the following precautions. Mr Parapina was not allowed to talk to anybody about these assignments. He had to bring all his photographic exquipent, camera, enlarger, chemicals, photographic paper etc to the house in question. He was not allowed to leave with the negatives or any prints. The mothers were present during the photographic sessions and while he produced the prints so that he could not smuggle any incriminating pictures out of the house.

In order to ensure that no outsider, not even an heir, could prove who had been posing for any of these pictures, the photographs were taken only from the neck downwards - a very cold and clinical operation.

The Esselbrügges, by having the paintings made and photographed, also seem to have been concerned with posterity and it is fortunate that they have survived as long as they have (from say 1828 to 2002, i.e. 175 years so far ).