Jan en Go Kessler in een bos bij de Rudolfstein c. 1910

Curator: Oh, I just love how serene this photograph feels! Editor: I feel like I’m eavesdropping on a quiet afternoon picnic! It’s Hermann Johannes Kessler’s work, capturing Jan and Go Kessler in a forest near the Rudolfstein, around 1910. It looks to be a gelatin silver print. Curator: Yes, there is an extraordinary feeling about silver gelatin prints. They carry time within them. Looking closely, do you sense anything familiar in its pictorial composition? For me, there's a touch of fairytale. The subjects seem utterly undisturbed by the world. Editor: I see it! Like figures from a lost pastoral myth. What’s fascinating is the inherent symbolism. Forests in art have been these wild places representing unconscious desires but also fear. This setting, though, with these calm subjects, is fascinating in that tension. They almost seem to melt back into nature, but at the same time pose in a constructed, deliberate arrangement. Curator: It makes you wonder what story is behind this shot. Perhaps the landscape is acting like a mirror here. We read them as composed figures, when in fact, they could have arranged themselves so casually. Think of the cultural pressures of posing versus simply being—a moment suspended in time. Editor: The casual and yet clearly directed image becomes quite complicated when we begin to break down the nature of what they represent in this almost perfectly composed scene. And yet this piece presents more questions than answers, doesn't it? Curator: Definitely, especially given what little context we seem to have, it's very provocative how open to possibilities and conjecture we are left feeling. Editor: So we move from looking, to wondering, to imagining stories and reflecting on who *we* are, and *they* are! Curator: Nicely put, I can't wait to learn more and think more on this piece myself!