Gezicht op Delphi vanuit het zuiden before 1905

Editor: So, this is “Gezicht op Delphi vanuit het zuiden” – “View of Delphi from the South” – taken by the English Photo Co. sometime before 1905. It’s a printed photograph and strikes me as quite stark, almost brutal, in its depiction of the landscape. What do you see in this piece? Curator: I see a conscious attempt to negotiate the emerging industrial photographic process with artistic ambition. The ‘English Photo Co.’ probably signifies factory-like output, but note how the tones, seemingly grey, have been modulated across the entire print in order to generate particular effects, not dissimilar from drawing and etching. The *craft* in mass production. Editor: That’s fascinating! So you’re suggesting they were trying to elevate what was essentially a commercial product into something more artistic through manipulation of the medium? Curator: Precisely! Pictorialism, as a style, positioned itself deliberately against straightforward mechanical reproduction. The final image owes less to the supposed truthfulness of photography and more to a certain atmospheric quality akin to Romantic painting. Consider also how the "scene" of Delphi--a place thick with cultural capital as the site of pilgrimage and the origin of philosophy--lends the photograph a veneer of legitimacy. How might we read this today as a prefiguration of art's expanded reproduction into postcards, or prints destined for decor? Editor: I see what you mean. It’s not just a record; it’s an *interpretation*, a construction, carefully produced and, ultimately, meant for distribution and consumption. What strikes me is the way even industrial processes can be imbued with artistry, which maybe blurs our categories. Curator: Indeed. Thinking about art as primarily a process, rather than simply a product, encourages us to consider the means of its making and circulation, not just its aesthetic qualities. What did *mass* art mean for the art world?