Twee terracotta sculpturen van Apollo en een halfnaakte vrouw before 1857

Curator: Here we have a photograph titled 'Twee terracotta sculpturen van Apollo en een halfnaakte vrouw' or, 'Two terracotta sculptures of Apollo and a semi-nude woman', created before 1857 by Marcel Gustave Laverdet. What's your initial read? Editor: There's a kind of ghostly vulnerability about them, suspended against that stark background. They feel… fragile, like whispers from a forgotten time, capturing not just the sculptures, but the light that touched them then. It makes you think about the clay itself, doesn't it, once so malleable and now fixed in this eternal gaze. Curator: Absolutely. Consider the production of terracotta, easily molded from readily available clay. Laverdet’s photograph underscores that relationship between the material, the artisanal skill in shaping it into classical forms like Apollo, and then its re-presentation through photographic means. What this offers us is an accessible form, in contrast to perhaps more traditionally prized marble sculptures. Editor: I love the imperfections too; they humanize these idealized figures. Apollo, slightly chipped, that woman’s drapery…rough and unfinished. They tell a story not just of myth, but of making, of hands shaping earth, and the imperfections of that touch preserved in time. It reminds you art wasn't always this rarified, pristine thing, but grew out of the ground itself. Curator: And thinking of context, Laverdet captured these before 1857. It is very interesting to view a photograph, in this nascent technology, document sculpture harking back to ancient times. It encourages us to consider value, class, taste – who got to own what, and how we record it. These works appear almost like specimens or documents… How has man changed sculpture and history in one swoop. Editor: So well put. It also suggests the ambition and the vulnerability of the artistic process. How an artist can imbue earth with breath for a time and let us peer through that very creation in photograph form, as time slips past. This feels profound! Curator: I find the work incredibly resonant, it challenges a kind of artistic value to making. And makes it visible to all. Editor: It leaves me wondering about all the anonymous hands that touched this earth, and the stories they might whisper, if only we listened closer. A collaboration through material, time and imagination.