Restanten van de Tempel van Venus in Pompeï met op de achtergrond de Vesuvius c. 1860 - 1900

Roberto Rive made this albumen print of the Temple of Venus in Pompeii, sometime in the mid-19th century. Photography was then a relatively new medium, a chemical process still carrying the aura of alchemy. And Rive has used it to capture a scene of ancient industry: the stone columns of the temple, each one a testament to quarrying, carving, and raising into place. It's a built environment, just like the photographer's studio. Note how the columns lead your eye back, through the ruined city toward Vesuvius, which destroyed the temple and preserved it in ash. That eruption, too, was a kind of making – a cataclysmic transformation of earth and culture. Rive's photograph invites us to consider the labor of crafting history itself, and the social forces that both create and obliterate civilizations. It reminds us that creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin.