On board the Caravel Santa Marie, looking aft 1887 - 1893

Curator: What a fascinating photograph. This stereo card print captures a view of the Caravel Santa Marie, looking aft. The photographer, Henry Hamilton Bennett, created this image sometime between 1887 and 1893. It's currently part of the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. Editor: It has such a sturdy, almost claustrophobic feel, doesn't it? The rigging and that small lifeboat seem to box you in, creating a sense of containment within the larger vessel. I immediately feel transported back to a specific historical moment. Curator: The symbolism of ships is endlessly rich. This is an image taken on a replica of one of Columbus’s ships in a rapidly modernizing Chicago. So much loaded into what seems like a straightforward photograph of a boat. Editor: Absolutely. Ships throughout history carry connotations of exploration, discovery, and, let's not forget, conquest. The image, of course, has obvious symbolism as a tribute to European colonization of the Americas, a powerful political statement at that moment in time. Curator: It's also interesting to consider that it’s a stereograph—meant to create a three-dimensional image when viewed through a stereoscope. This offered the viewer a unique and seemingly authentic perspective onto a specific site of global historical narrative. Photography was being used to present its viewer a sense of experiencing the physical setting from that past moment. Editor: A very constructed “authentic” experience, yes. You're given a simulated physical experience that, in truth, reenacts a one-sided vision of colonization. By the late 19th century the “Age of Discovery” was something Americans mythologized and celebrated. So I read this less as an actual record and more as a celebration of dominant ideology and history in visual terms. Curator: True, there’s no escaping the politics inherent in what Bennett chose to capture and how it was then marketed, this little physical thing designed to then carry a political point of view. Editor: It’s thought-provoking how this single photographic image, offering a constructed tangible presence and an assumed, agreed upon view, encapsulates an attitude toward a chapter in the larger human story. Curator: Agreed. I find myself pondering what symbolic narratives are embedded in even our most casual photographs today.