Gezicht op Ruhla 1868 - 1890

Editor: So, here we have Hermann Selle's "Gezicht op Ruhla," likely taken between 1868 and 1890. It’s an albumen print—a photographic process, I understand? The monochromatic palette gives it such an antique and nostalgic feel, doesn't it? Looking at this, what stories do you think this photograph is trying to tell us? Curator: Well, isn't it fascinating? This image pulls me into a quieter, almost dreamlike state. It speaks of a slower time. Look at how the village is nestled into the landscape. It almost feels…organic, wouldn’t you say? Almost as if the settlement grew there, a little like the vegetation, adapting and flourishing where it could. Editor: Yes! Like it sprouted there naturally. What is that photographic process bringing out for you in that organic feel? Curator: Right? I get lost imagining those lives. Back then, photography itself was a novelty, a scientific marvel and a budding art form combined! This photographer is meticulously recording, preserving a specific, maybe vanishing, reality…or maybe even creating one. Is the haze simply age or deliberate soft focus, I wonder? Perhaps intending to capture something more "beautiful" or evocative, rather than simply representational. You know, turning something like photographic truth into poetry. Editor: So you feel like it's less objective truth and more...subjective interpretation? Curator: Precisely! And who knows, perhaps Selle walked down that road on that very day with some preconceived notion of a perfect town, a vision, rather than something clinically accurate, just using a photographic recording to bring that view to life? This makes the photograph more his, doesn’t it, regardless? Makes it more Selle than Ruhla, at least just for us! Editor: That's a really interesting perspective! I hadn't considered the idea of imposing a vision onto a scene through photography. Curator: Well, thinking of it, it can be applied to any time an artist picks up a paint brush! Now what do *you* see as we walk away from this photographic poem? Editor: I see that perhaps the poem wasn’t Ruhla as it really was, but as Selle remembered it. Maybe photography itself is a collaboration between subject and memory! Thanks!