Gezicht op het Hotel De La Paix te Parijs in aanbouw c. 1850 - 1875

Curator: This photographic print, produced by the London Stereoscopic Company between approximately 1850 and 1875, offers us a peek at the construction of the Hotel De La Paix in Paris. What's your initial reaction to it? Editor: It feels very temporal, raw, like a freeze-frame in the middle of some monumental undertaking. All these bits and pieces of scaffolding, building supplies scattered about, and the workers milling around make you think how much intense, physical effort went into making even "just" a hotel. Curator: Absolutely. I'm struck by the photographic medium itself. Consider the labor required to create even a single print. The collection, transportation, preparation, and exposure of the photographic materials would involve extensive coordination and resources. Then there’s the labor and resource investments in creating prints suitable for mass consumption. It hints at the industrialization of art. Editor: True! And, this makes me ponder the lives touched by that "instantaneous view," those builders, pedestrians, people in wagons -- all unintentionally part of artmaking for a fleeting moment, maybe for hours or days. It’s romantic, but also reveals hierarchies of class. Curator: Certainly. Look closely, and the sheer quantity of timber on display stands out: support beams, raw planks awaiting transformation. The image acts almost like an inventory, highlighting the crucial raw materials and logistics behind 19th-century urban development. Think of deforestation, of labor disputes in extraction… the implications expand outwards rapidly. Editor: That makes me think about the "bones" of the city before they're covered with finery; this unmasked quality shows the "making of" versus a polished end-product— the grit, and human sweat behind elegance and refinement. There is a beauty in witnessing its "becoming." Curator: Exactly! Focusing on material realities like this prompts consideration about whose stories are usually left out of the grand narratives found within finished masterpieces—as well as the ethics in consuming "the finalized product" without interrogating its foundation and formation. Editor: It’s almost haunting to think all the work, noise and sweat now silenced into a tiny framed picture. But also really awesome, now my awareness got expanded in terms of context of production.