Mt. Ushba, Central Caucasus c. 1889

Curator: Vittorio Sella captured this view of Mt. Ushba in the Central Caucasus. It's held at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: It's… imposing. The drama of the light and shadow, that peak piercing the clouds! There's an almost spiritual quality to it. Curator: Sella was a pioneering mountain photographer, driven by exploration. This image documents not only the landscape but also the colonial gaze upon it. Editor: I see that, but there's also a reverence, a vulnerability in rendering nature's sheer power. It's a reminder of our own smallness, isn't it? Curator: Absolutely. Photography, in its early days, often served as a tool of control, but here, the mountain seems to defy easy capture. Editor: Maybe Sella was attempting to connect to something beyond the human scale, to translate the sublime experience of standing before such grandeur. Curator: Perhaps. It's a landscape photograph that invites us to contemplate our place within a vast and indifferent world. Editor: Yes, a world that perhaps, we should tread on more lightly.