Straat in Morlaix met winkels en voorbijgangers 1901

Curator: Before us we have "Street in Morlaix with Shops and Passers-by," a gelatin silver print taken around 1901 by an anonymous photographer and now residing here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: My initial reaction is one of a timeless, sun-drenched provincial scene. The composition, with its narrow, winding street, feels both intimate and inviting, like stepping back into a quieter moment. Curator: Absolutely. One senses that this was an effort to catalogue urban settings through the realist style, echoing larger cultural movements towards democratizing the artistic process and widening access to representations of the real world. The location also holds its symbolic weight; Morlaix in Brittany was a bustling trading centre but one away from the Parisian scene of this period. Editor: And the figures within the scene – particularly the woman in what appears to be traditional garb – lends itself to a compelling reading. Are they deliberately positioned to create that timeless narrative you suggest? Do they evoke that sense of local identity in face of urbanization and the arrival of modernities that comes from elsewhere? Curator: Well, to think about the agency of those subjects, is tough to do. This photography also has to be placed against late nineteenth century Europe, one in which racial and ethnic stereotypes had real purchase. The people, shops and overall architecture all contributed to and were consumed as documentary evidence of life. Editor: That’s such an important point to make. On the surface, there's a documentary-like feeling of record keeping to the photograph. Underneath it's this other subtext you identify: perhaps that turn-of-the-century curiosity about other places and peoples. In relation to our times, there's that slightly melancholic, idealized quality, a bit lost. Curator: Exactly. It gives a real sense of the layered purposes embedded in even seemingly straightforward street photography. Editor: Thinking about this photo now, I feel it tells us as much about those recording as those being recorded, revealing something about collective fascination and visual rhetoric in 1900s France.