Promenade te Alicante c. 1850 - 1880

Editor: This gelatin-silver print, “Promenade te Alicante,” is dated around 1850-1880. It looks like a lively street scene, bustling with people. The detail achieved with photography is incredible, even in this era. What can you tell me about this photograph? Curator: The choice of gelatin silver reveals much. We should examine what the popularization of photography meant for documenting labor and class. Here we see an alleged "promenade," a leisure activity for the bourgeoisie, but what of the laboring classes captured in the frame? Editor: That's interesting. It does look staged with some blurred movement; perhaps some laborers and middle class exist together here. The focus on gelatin-silver process, though, feels quite technical. How does that relate? Curator: Think about it this way: gelatin silver printing, as a readily reproducible process, democratized image production but it also became a tool for social observation, a method to catalog types, classes, and labor. Who controls the means of representation, and whose story is truly being told? Editor: I see your point. The material process embedded here actually encodes access and perhaps exploitation through visual representation! Thanks, that’s given me a lot to consider about photography as both art and documentation of social standing. Curator: Precisely! Understanding art means interrogating its creation and what that act reveals about societal structures.