Twee portretten van Lutdevan van de Toda-stam before 1886

Editor: So, here we have, from before 1886, *Two Portraits of Lutdevan from the Toda Tribe,* albumen prints bound in an album, by Paolo Mantegazza. What strikes me first is how... intimate the composition feels, even though it's obviously a product of its time and the limitations of the photography available. What do you see here? Curator: Ah, intimacy. I’m so glad you sensed that! Because amidst the colonial gaze inherent in such ethnographic studies, I see a quest, a… long-ago yearning for human connection peeking through. Look how the sitters’ profiles, almost identical, create this double echo across time and space. It’s not just documentation, is it? What does it whisper to you, that mirrored image? Editor: It's almost dreamlike, I guess. Like reflections in water. I feel a certain stillness too, despite the subjects’ being long gone. Curator: Precisely. And think of the albumen print, each one subtly different. Impermanence caught on glass. And the colonial element—could Mantegazza’s scientific gaze truly capture an individual soul? Perhaps the “truth” here lies more in what the *viewer* brings to these faces, those half-forgotten lives. The real question: are we really "seeing" them, or just ourselves in their faded reflection? Editor: So it's a sort of a double portrait not only of the subjects, but also of us, the viewers, trying to understand their story? Curator: Exactly! This image reflects on the person represented as well as the person perceiving, an artistic concept that makes one ponder history and humanity’s collective past. That's photography's lasting, unexpected magic, isn’t it? To catch more than a likeness; to catch a feeling, a shared space across time. Editor: Wow, I'll never look at a historical portrait the same way again. Curator: That's the beautiful and challenging aspect of delving into old images. What a journey!