Keizer Wilhelm II van Duitsland in zijn werkvertrek aan boord van het jacht Hohenzollern before 1892

Curator: What catches my eye is the aged paper – you can almost feel the texture and history it holds. Editor: This is "Keizer Wilhelm II van Duitsland in zijn werkvertrek aan boord van het jacht Hohenzollern" by Paul Güssfeldt, from before 1892. It seems to be an image from a sketchbook or journal. What’s fascinating is how raw and unrefined the medium looks. What do you make of it? Curator: The apparent roughness interests me the most. What sort of labor was involved in the paper’s making, and the printing process itself? Consider the intended audience: was it a private journal, a gift, or meant for broader consumption? How does this impact its 'art' status? Editor: I suppose if it were a private journal, the "art" aspect might be unintentional, maybe just a byproduct of someone recording their life... Curator: Precisely! Now, how does viewing this in a digital space, divorced from its material presence, impact our understanding? Does it elevate or diminish the original intention? Consider the hand-drawn typeface – a direct trace of the maker. What does this imply when we view it as a digital facsimile? Editor: That's a good point. Viewing it digitally makes it accessible but flattens its historical and material context. It almost loses its aura. Seeing the materiality highlighted helps reframe how we consider this type of image, not as a piece of "high art" but perhaps something else entirely. Curator: Exactly. And by understanding how such materials were created, distributed, and valued in its time, we start understanding larger cultural and political forces at play. Editor: I never considered those implications of materiality before, especially thinking about something like the labor involved in making the paper itself. That completely changes how I see the work.