Gezicht op Tourrettes-lès-Vence 1903

Curator: I'm immediately struck by its gentle light, the sepia tones give it such an old world dreaminess, don't you think? Editor: It’s fascinating to see the intersection of photography and pictorialism at play here. Delizy, using photography to achieve painterly effects. The soft focus mimics the aesthetics popular in painting at the time, but, materially, it’s all photochemical processes, lens, and light. Curator: Right, it’s not just recording, it's reimagining. The way he captures Tourrettes-lès-Vence almost feels like a memory, faded yet vibrant. I feel like I can almost smell the sun-baked earth. Does that resonate with you, or are you all about the technical wizardry? Editor: Always both, dear. Consider how the Pictorialists would manipulate their negatives or prints with various toners, to alter colour, like using sepia or platinum, affecting texture. We should consider the material constraints and then think about the agency he found within them. This wasn’t a straightforward capture; it’s a crafted object. Curator: A crafted memory, perhaps? I love the almost dreamy haze softening the buildings. Editor: The effect may indeed come across dreamlike, blurring the fine details, so it pushes this photograph into the realm of "art" rather than documentary. Curator: Delizy achieves something timeless. It’s not just a scene but a feeling. What do you suppose drove him to it? Editor: Perhaps the commercial opportunities of photography allowed Delizy an opportunity that was out of reach in other more highly valued genres such as painting or sculpture. Delizy embraced the mass reproducibility, materiality, and aesthetic possibilities inherent in photographic processes. Curator: Yes, he embraced those processes and I believe gave us a gift of capturing that place, in that moment in time, a lasting resonance that’s so tangible. It really does pull you in. Editor: Indeed, he took hold of photographic processes, and transformed an art that was still gaining recognition as "fine art". That has transformed the art landscape itself.