When I first glanced the image, I thought the image was portrait of five men,
but Laura told us that is a self portrait of woman, Hannah Maynard, and she taught herself the chemistry that she enjoyed experimenting with various processes.
Hannah shows five different facial expressions, and her sight was on herself and viewers. From this image, I could tell how women were strong in exploring self portrait back then although not many women had a power to do those things over men's power.
In her self portrait, she's looking at us with powerful facial expression, which reveals her power, and other face of herself reveals the calmness, which reveals herself as a feminist.