Aigues-Mortes 1856 - 1862

Curator: Edouard Baldus’s 1856 photograph, titled "Aigues-Mortes", captures a seemingly impenetrable medieval fortress. What’s your initial impression? Editor: Bleak. It speaks volumes about isolation and the futility of human endeavor against time and the elements. It gives me a feeling of oppressive history. Curator: I see the symbolic representation of stability. These structures, with their circular forms repeated at regular intervals, stand as silent witnesses to centuries. Think of the archetypes associated with walled cities, their promise of safety versus the dangers that exist outside. Editor: That’s one reading, of course. But who was safe inside, and from whom? A wall isn’t just protection; it's an assertion of power and control, built quite literally on the backs of the vulnerable. The architecture here reinforces a narrative of exclusion, a visual language of Us versus Them that resonates disturbingly through history and into the present day. Curator: Indeed, the history of walled cities is fraught, especially in Medieval France where fortifications also denoted civil hierarchy and localized feudal power. Baldus's choice of perspective could then imply looking in or looking out—the photographer’s perspective matters. The high contrast is dramatic too. Editor: I am immediately drawn to that same contrast – those blacks, whites and grays amplify the starkness, almost scrubbing any romanticism, while simultaneously reminding one of the absence of human presence beyond the frame. The emptiness in the foreground especially accentuates this feeling. Curator: And the symbolism in its emptiness too, a negative space representing so many complex relationships over time; those between city dwellers, and the landscape they inhabit, for instance. The medium of photography becomes a mediator through time. Editor: Precisely! And the formal composition then frames these dialectics so explicitly: exclusion, protection, power… Thank you for highlighting such complex layers within a single shot, which feels surprisingly pertinent today! Curator: My pleasure. Visual media preserves history for us, sometimes literally in black and white!