Gezicht op het centrale plein van de World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 met in het midden een grote vijver met daarin het standbeeld door Daniel Chester French, voorstellend een personificatie van de republiek 1893

Curator: Looking at this 1893 photograph by Charles Dudley Arnold, "Gezicht op het centrale plein van de World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago", what catches your eye first? Editor: The sheer scale of it all. It’s like a city plucked from a dream. The buildings look almost impossibly pristine, starkly set against that massive lagoon. It seems as utopian as it is improbable. Curator: That improbable feeling stems, in part, from its temporary nature. This monumental "White City" was deliberately built with transient materials, as a spectacle meant to astound, then vanish. Consider all the plaster and manpower poured into something never intended to last. Editor: Absolutely, it’s fascinating thinking about the logistics involved—the raw materials, the workers who poured their labor into constructing this fantasy. What about their stories? I mean, beyond the visual grandeur, where's the acknowledgement of their material contribution? It feels romanticized in its presentation of grandeur alone. Curator: Perhaps it speaks to the collective dream of progress, a desire to display an imagined future so bold it transcends the earthly constraints of time and toil. Still, the gelatin-silver print and the very act of capturing this scene transformed this fleeting utopian aspiration into a tangible artifact. What of its afterimage now? Editor: I am intrigued by the albumen-print qualities giving a slightly surreal cast. This does create an other-world feeling, although that material finish, while interesting, only furthers a skewed portrayal of creation and labor—which were obviously quite "real." Curator: True. Looking at that central statue, “Republic”, dominating the water feature... French's sculpture encapsulates both American ambition and idealized civic virtue, now veiled in silvery history. I wonder how its presence impacts viewers then, and our impression today. Editor: In a way, the image becomes a record, not just of buildings and a statue, but of industrial fervor and a societal ambition materialized in impermanent stuff. Looking closer allows us to reflect on the layers of intention involved. It's more than a pretty cityscape. Curator: Indeed, and it prompts thinking about our role as audiences of spectacle, be it material, imagined or something that is now past. The impermanence of life in general is heightened when viewing scenes such as this.