Naples, Family Of Sailors 1880

This photograph, "Naples, Family of Sailors," was taken by Roberto Rive in the mid-19th century, using the wet collodion process. Photography in this era was a painstaking craft. Glass plates had to be coated, sensitized, exposed, and developed, all within minutes. This laborious process imbued each image with a sense of immediacy and intentionality. The sepia tones and soft focus, inherent to the collodion process, add a layer of nostalgia and distance to the scene. Note the family’s weariness, etched onto their faces. Photography offered a new way of seeing and documenting social realities. Rive’s choice of subject matter, a working-class family, suggests a deliberate attempt to capture a slice of Neapolitan life, framed by the city’s booming ports. This new medium democratized portraiture, and enabled a wider audience to consume images of people from different cultures and social classes, often romanticized.   Consider how Rive’s artistic choices and photographic techniques contribute to our understanding of labor, family, and the rapidly changing world of 19th-century Naples.