Gezicht op de baai van Napels, gezien vanaf de omgeving van Sorrento 1861 - 1878

Curator: This photograph, taken between 1861 and 1878, is entitled "View of the Bay of Naples, seen from the surroundings of Sorrento" and is attributed to Ernest Eléonor Pierre Lamy. Editor: There's a faded romance to this, isn't there? A whisper of the Grand Tour, that yearning gaze across the bay... melancholy, but lovely. Curator: Indeed. What draws me is the technology at play. This stereoscopic image was a very popular form of entertainment. The photograph's materiality is everything: the albumen print, mounted on cardstock, designed for a handheld viewer. Consider the labor in replicating this image, circulating it, contributing to a collective understanding of the Neapolitan landscape. Editor: I’m lost in the silvery greys of the water and the shore, with those stately buildings hugging the coast... you can almost feel the sun. And there’s a figure, or maybe two, observing from a low wall... they are so tiny they could be contemplating the end of days, or a pizza. Curator: These commercially-produced photographs offered an accessible vision of these famous sites. What stories did the consumers of these stereographs tell themselves about Italian life, the picturesque ideal so sought-after? Were they seeing true representations of the labor, poverty and difficult social situations happening at this time? Editor: Maybe this is sentimental of me, but I'm always moved by art that makes visible how much of experience is really about just gazing, seeing the view in front of you... Maybe these images offered an escape. Even if they hid so much reality. Curator: Perhaps we should think about that selective vision that these landscape images construct. What work went into cropping the view, staging the scene for popular consumption? What narratives are prioritized, and what suppressed? Editor: And me? I’ll go on pretending to be one of those tiny figures looking at the Bay of Naples, trying to catch every ray of sunshine, the light itself... it's all that matters sometimes, doesn't it? Curator: Precisely. Materiality and visibility: key factors of experience.