Restanten van een weg in Pompeï, Italië 1857 - 1914

Curator: I am so excited to introduce Giorgio Sommer's photograph, "Restanten van een weg in Pompeï, Italië," which roughly translates to "Remnants of a Road in Pompeii, Italy". Sommer made it between 1857 and 1914. The medium is gelatin silver print. Editor: The mood is immediately striking, wouldn’t you say? It's both solemn and strangely serene. Seeing a cityscape so... hushed. It makes you wonder, doesn't it, about the clamor that used to echo through those walls? Curator: Exactly! Sommer's choice to use the gelatin silver print emphasizes this hushed beauty. This photograph, capturing a landscape frozen in time by Vesuvius, is just so symbolic. Notice how the remaining stone slabs guide your eyes, hinting at the bustling lives lived here centuries before. Editor: Those slabs! The Romans were clever engineers, weren’t they? I think there's such a melancholy in seeing the practicality of their engineering amidst such destruction. The ruins still show us their plan for that road. A haunting echo of daily life and forward momentum, completely, irrevocably stopped. Curator: Precisely. It's more than just a documentation of ruins; it’s a meditation on mortality. That road represents journey, commerce, and human connection, which abruptly turned into an arresting image in remembrance of human fragility and the unyielding power of nature. The very texture of those walls— Editor: –speaks of loss. That raw, brick exposed to the elements… it feels like stripped skin. How civilizations come and go and are ultimately changed. And of course, as time wears down these monuments we too will vanish from sight one day. It’s quite poetic in its own sobering way. Curator: Ultimately, Sommer invites us to become temporary inhabitants of this ancient city, imagining what once was and pondering the weight of what remains. A photograph that immortalizes what time itself erases. Editor: It makes you grateful, strangely enough. Seeing how Pompeii's everyday beauty persisted in the face of destruction. What else, from this very moment, might someday leave us awestruck?