Onthulling van het monument voor de Belgen gesneuveld bij Quatre-Bras (1815), 1926 Possibly 1926

Curator: My initial feeling looking at this work, "Onthulling van het monument voor de Belgen gesneuveld bij Quatre-Bras (1815), 1926," is a sense of subdued solemnity. What do you think? Editor: Subdued, yes, definitely, but I feel something else as well... the greyscale is heavy and, oddly, isolating, though we can see the monument and the crowd that has assembled to unveil it. It makes me consider how historical photographs create a double remove - we're separated by time and now by the monochromatic. What are you thinking about when you view it? Curator: For me, viewing historical photographs demands critical engagement, particularly concerning power and representation. This photographic print captures the monument unveiling event as a specific cultural and political act, seemingly dating back to 1926, serves as a reminder of the battle of Quatre-Bras in 1815, during the Napoleonic Wars. Editor: So, who commissioned this work? Why photograph the crowd instead of the memorial being unveiled? All these silent onlookers staring back, but there are so many that we can't see much past the heads. I feel strangely aware of everyone, as if they are alive still and looking to be witnessed by a visitor viewing this print today, which is so very odd, because what am *I* unveiling from my view, here, in this museum? Curator: That is where the nuances of nationalism come into play. Here, this event emphasizes national pride. But it also encourages a broader conversation, maybe a crucial inquiry of the sociopolitical conditions that shape memory. As you note, there’s something profoundly unnerving and ghostly in this piece of cultural event photography, specifically in the fact that you almost cannot make out their faces clearly. What meaning do you draw? Editor: Haunting, it's definitely a bit haunting! As though all those onlookers are, like you said, silently asking what was really gained and what was lost and what happens to national fervor decades later after these types of monumental unveiling rituals are complete? They wanted to remember but perhaps they forgot *how* to remember and simply became relics as the years advanced? Food for thought. Curator: Agreed. Ultimately, the picture prompts viewers to meditate on our intertwined present and past through historical photography as medium. Editor: Exactly. Thank you for those contextual reflections.