Gezicht op de Anti-Libanon, een bergketen op de grens van Libanon en Syrië 1898

Editor: So this is Johannes Lodewijk Heldring’s "View of the Anti-Lebanon, a mountain range on the border of Lebanon and Syria," a photograph from 1898. It's a landscape that feels really stark and monumental to me, but also somewhat remote. What strikes you about it? Curator: Well, the "starkness" you mention gets me thinking about representation of the Middle East in the late 19th century. How do you think an image like this participates in the colonial gaze? Think about it: a European artist depicting a landscape, subtly claiming it through the act of documentation. What stories does this landscape *not* tell us? Editor: That’s a really interesting point. It’s so easy to just see it as a pretty landscape, but there’s so much more to unpack in terms of power dynamics. Like, we’re missing the people who inhabit this space. Does the photograph, by excluding them, inadvertently reinforce a narrative of emptiness and availability for Western exploration or domination? Curator: Exactly. Who gets to define whose land this is, and for what purposes? What do you think the very act of focusing on a seemingly “empty” landscape achieves? Does it erase or make invisible pre-existing social structures, and existing territorial claims? Also, let's talk about the very concept of "realism" in art; it presumes an objective depiction, while overlooking the fact that even photographs involve a subjective act of framing and selection, consciously or unconsciously guided by societal assumptions and individual perceptions. Editor: I hadn’t considered how loaded a simple landscape could be. I guess, on the surface, it appears objective. But considering it now, and thinking about how it omits people, and reinforces certain narratives—it gives me a whole different understanding of the role of photography at this time. Curator: It is never *just* a landscape, right? There’s always a political undercurrent, whether intentional or not.