Gezicht op een gebouw van de Johanniter Orde en een gezicht op de Ecce Homo boog in Jeruzalem before 1865

Curator: Right now, we're looking at an albumen print from before 1865, titled "Gezicht op een gebouw van de Johanniter Orde en een gezicht op de Ecce Homo boog in Jeruzalem," attributed to James McDonald. It features two separate photographic views, neatly arranged on the page. Editor: There's something very stark and haunting about this, isn’t there? The bleached tones and crumbling architecture speak to a past weighed down by... something. History, probably. Curator: Ha! “Something”—yes. There's a real tension between decay and endurance in this particular photograph. Notice how McDonald captured both the monumentality and the granular textures of these ancient sites. What do you make of the choice to place two separate images on the same page? Editor: Immediately makes me think about mass production. The albumen print, with its dependence on silver nitrate and egg whites... it speaks of photographic work as chemistry, craft. Each print laboriously produced, and then reproduced, stuck in a book... Curator: Good point. It also suggests a diptych-like format, a visual conversation, maybe. The upper view displays the entrance to the Hospital of the Knights of St. John and it looks so worn out and forgotten, while the lower one brings forth some laborers on a reconstruction of Ecce Homo Arch, putting labour at centre stage... Editor: Yes! See, the human element! Those laborers standing there, seemingly swallowed by the scale of what they're working on. We should talk about how those human subjects are complicit to the decay of their labour itself! How are we supposed to preserve this, how were these printed… What was the working context? Who commissioned this photo? Curator: The print's realism is remarkable and allows us to access daily life from way back. Thinking about the human element in this photo made me consider that these spaces are always more than just stone; they're steeped in stories, and belief, and continuous layers of reinvention... Editor: Which brings me back to thinking about the craft itself, and the labour that it demanded. I mean, just imagine McDonald transporting all that equipment, lugging those chemicals in that environment... This object is an encounter. Curator: I couldn't agree more.