Ongeluk op het treinstation Montparnasse op 22 oktober 1895 in Parijs, Frankrijk Possibly 1895 - 1896

Curator: What a stunning and, let’s be honest, slightly bonkers image. Talk about arriving in style! Editor: Indeed! This anonymous print, “Ongeluk op het treinstation Montparnasse op 22 oktober 1895 in Parijs, Frankrijk,” thought to have been produced shortly after the actual event, captures that rather unfortunate train crash with an almost serene realism. Curator: Serene?! A train bursting through the station wall isn’t exactly what springs to mind when I think “tranquil." It’s a fascinating disaster frozen in time. There’s a gritty kind of beauty to the mess though, isn't there? I get a visceral sensation looking at it. The energy, even captured in this medium, is palpable. Editor: Precisely. Note how the photograph’s sharp focus and meticulous detail serve to amplify the force of the accident. The locomotive's trajectory, crashing through the architecture... The contrast between the locomotive's dynamism and the rigid grid of the building. It becomes almost balletic. Curator: Balletic in a “Swan Lake” meets demolition derby kind of way! Seriously, though, what's striking is the vulnerability revealed. Bricks and mortar shattered—the brute strength of technology against… well, not very much, actually. Just the flimsy idea of permanence we cling to. I suppose that is genre painting. It illustrates the dangers involved with technology advancement. Editor: Quite. Further enhancing the impact is the monochromatic palette which casts a somewhat mournful gaze over the entire scene. Consider too, this image residing inside this textbook... it illustrates that our need to control, categorise, and document incidents and information is far less powerful than the events they depict. Curator: True! What are the odds, though? That an event so monumental would find itself reduced to just another page? Still, I like the fact that even contained, this photo, or print, has the capability of stopping me mid-stride, disrupting, even derailing, my otherwise ordered day. Editor: Well put. In that sense, the work fulfills a peculiar duality—both containing and echoing the destructive potential it illustrates. It's an accidental monument, as unruly as the incident it memorializes.