Schlossbrücke in Berlijn 1868 - 1870

Curator: This gelatine-silver print, "Schlossbrücke in Berlin", was captured between 1868 and 1870 by Johann Friedrich Stiehm. The title refers to the celebrated bridge that crosses the Spree River in Berlin. What's your immediate take? Editor: It feels both grounded and ethereal at once. Those sculptures perched atop the bridge give a feeling of hovering somewhere between the mundane of city life and some higher, more aspirational realm. There’s also something subtly mournful in the sepia tone. Curator: Absolutely. Angels – figures that guard a passage between states, worlds, the terrestrial and spiritual. I wonder, is Stiehm suggesting something about Berlin's position at that time, as it journeyed towards becoming the capital of the German Empire? Editor: It's striking how those figures— the two gentlemen— seem dwarfed. They underscore the grandeur but also suggest the individual's relative insignificance against the backdrop of larger civic ambitions and this imposing architectural landscape. I detect also how different those gentlemen are from today's fashion: how might we imagine them? Curator: Dressed rather formally for what appears to be an everyday promenade. Their attire is, undeniably, an embodiment of that 19th-century inclination towards ceremony, or the deliberate projection of power and stature. These details invite so many threads! I can just picture them. Editor: Indeed. Thinking of Berlin itself, and bridges more generally, they are not merely crossings, are they? They become focal points for human experience, spaces where personal stories are both shared and witnessed by watchful statues, against the monumental grain of history. Curator: Yes. A crossroads of life— and lives! What a complex narrative is wound up here, literally embedded into the silver.