Wharves at Richmond, Virginia 1865

Editor: This is Alexander Gardner’s "Wharves at Richmond, Virginia," taken in 1865, a gelatin-silver print. It feels like a landscape of absence and waiting...a visual record, certainly, but what else do you see in this piece, given your depth of experience with imagery? Curator: It’s interesting that you note a feeling of ‘waiting.’ Think about what waits here. The barrels and overturned boats suggest a paralyzed industry. Do you see how those stacks of bricks recall funerary markers? Gardner, like many photographers of the Civil War, understands the power of objects as cultural symbols, even unintended ones. These details tell us about societal memory and what's retained. Editor: I see that now. The arrangement of these ordinary objects—boats, barrels, bricks—creates a stillness that evokes loss, perhaps more profoundly than a direct depiction of conflict. It feels staged almost, but also eerily vacant. Curator: Vacancy becomes a language itself. Note also that Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. What emotional associations would this devastated wharf have had for viewers in 1865, then versus our modern vantage point? The meaning transforms across generations. We can almost feel the weight of a lost cause embedded in those barrels and the bare masts. Editor: I hadn’t thought about the Confederate context so directly, but it resonates with the muted tones and desolate atmosphere. So, photography isn't just documenting, it’s actively constructing meaning through what it chooses to show—and what it omits. Curator: Precisely. Gardner gives us symbolic representation, allowing emotional and political truths to emerge from what appears to be a simple, almost banal, landscape. What we bring to our reading and viewing impacts that original representation of meaning. Editor: I learned that images can act as time capsules, holding cultural memories within their seemingly objective surfaces. Thank you.