Portret van drie onbekende handelaren van graan in Sindh before 1872

Curator: The photograph before us, attributed to Henry Charles Baskerville Tanner, is entitled "Portret van drie onbekende handelaren van graan in Sindh," taken before 1872. Editor: It feels strangely posed, almost like a still from a play, with a whiff of the theatrical about it. A careful grouping for the camera, a tableau of trade, no? Curator: Indeed. Observe how the composition uses a limited tonal range, common for early photography, creating a study in contrasts. The careful arrangement of figures around the weighing scales underscores the photograph’s engagement with Orientalist tropes. Editor: And those faces, weathered by sun and experience. There's such quiet intensity. I wonder what they made of the process of being photographed – being rendered as objects of study for the foreign gaze. A young apprentice by his side echoes a very different sense of understanding to the work they do and will come to be doing. It hits me as both intimate and remote. Curator: That remote quality stems in part from the objective approach to portraiture. We find elements conforming to early Orientalist photography, that serves to re-confirm Europe's vision and expectations towards people from a distant land, even within the claim to scientific record. The play of light across the cotton clothing creates sharp lines; texture and form create the visual hierarchy. The scales represent the practical, financial world of trading with Sindh. Editor: Ah, yes. The colonial gaze is quite present. But despite that, it’s hard to escape the dignity, and the very human pride in their trade. I find myself wanting to know their names, to move past the anonymity that Orientalist art often imposes. The work also makes me think of a kind of frozen time... almost a memorialization that elevates the moment, which makes it stand out so strikingly. Curator: A keen observation, precisely the power of images and their ability to transcend. Photography as memory, as symbol, that operates in both time and outside of time itself. Editor: I will leave it with this feeling. A reminder of both the past’s complexity, its echoes in how we see today and the stories that art has yet to reveal.