Twee gezichten op een rotswoning, Spruce Tree House, in Mesa Verde National Park before 1893

Curator: Well, this page from a travelogue feels like a portal to the past. The images here, captured by Gustaf Nordenskiöld before 1893, depict Spruce Tree House in Mesa Verde National Park. Editor: It hits you, doesn't it? That lower image—it's a ghost in the rock. So much story trapped in those crumbling walls and dark, empty windows. It looks less like a home and more like a secret being whispered through stone. Curator: Indeed, Spruce Tree House was one of the best-preserved cliff dwellings. But looking at these images, especially given the title, I can't help but think about that dual perspective--the "twee gezichten," two faces, gazing upon it. Editor: Ah, a visual echo. Faces of observer and observed, both etched with time. That stark monochrome does so much here too. There’s no distraction—just pure form, light, shadow, and this feeling that we are looking at something both profoundly ancient and impossibly fragile. What were these images meant to convey at the time? Curator: To many in the late 19th century, this might have served as visual proof of the "Vanishing Race" theory—a popular concept at that time suggesting Indigenous peoples were destined for extinction. However, there is something reverential in these depictions that goes beyond the sensational or the exploitative. The detail he captures. Editor: But the symbolism… Those stark black windows like empty eyes staring back through time. It could represent so many things – loss, abandonment, but also endurance. Are we seeing ruins, or a testament to the persistence of the human spirit to create a community, literally carving it from stone? That dichotomy is pretty mesmerizing. Curator: I agree. It invites questions about preservation, documentation, and, most importantly, our relationship to the past and its inhabitants. Even now it stirs such contemplation of time’s passage and the secrets held by ancient stones. Editor: Absolutely. It reminds us how we project ourselves onto the remnants of civilizations past. It’s a beautiful, haunted image.