Kulu, Spiti; The Manirung Pass, view from below c. 1867

Curator: Looking at this photograph, I immediately feel swallowed by the grandeur of the mountains; it's vast and overpowering. Editor: This is Samuel Bourne's photographic print, "Kulu, Spiti; The Manirung Pass, view from below," currently housed at the Harvard Art Museums. Bourne was a 19th-century British landscape photographer, and images like this reveal his fascination with the sublime, especially in the context of colonial India. Curator: Sublimity indeed! There's almost no human presence, just these layers and layers of peaks fading into the distance. It's like a visual echo of silence. I wonder what it was like to haul all the equipment needed for wet plate photography up there. Editor: It speaks to the Victorian era’s obsession with exploration and mapping, literally and figuratively, the unknown. The "view from below" is important here. It underscores the power dynamic; nature here is being surveyed, claimed, and possessed. Curator: Yes, but also maybe admired? I think he was trying to capture the spiritual awe of nature, a bit like the Romantic painters. Editor: And simultaneously contributing to an imperial project. It's a complex relationship, wouldn’t you agree? Curator: Absolutely. I suppose that's the beauty, and the struggle, of looking back. There's always more than one view. Editor: Precisely. It's this complexity that allows us to critically explore our own relationship with both art and nature today.