Landschap bij Jericho c. 1850 - 1865

Editor: We’re looking at “Landschap bij Jericho (Landscape at Jericho)," a photograph by Francis Frith, likely from between 1850 and 1865. It’s an albumen print, bound in an album. I find the composition a little unsettling; it's all rough textures and a hazy emptiness. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Initially, one notices the stark tonal contrast. The meticulous detail captured through the albumen process yields a range of greys. Observe how the composition emphasizes a visual dichotomy; the lower plane seems almost porous, contrasting with a horizon shrouded in a hazy, almost ethereal quality. The placement of the horizon divides the frame, thereby flattening pictorial space, a very curious artistic decision for this landscape image. Editor: So, you're focusing on how the image itself is constructed, not so much what it represents? Curator: Precisely. Consider the relationship between the viewer and the viewed. There's a distinct foreground and background relationship that the artist creates using linear perspective; it is clearly defined by value, color, edges, texture, and space. This pushes us away from identifying emotionally or intellectually with the geographical representation of Jericho, toward engaging critically with its pictorial construction. Do you notice how light shapes the plains? Editor: I do. The textures in the foreground, emphasized by light, lead you into a sort of...nothingness in the distance. I guess I see how that affects the emotional experience now. Curator: Indeed. The power of the photograph, therefore, does not merely reside in its documentary capability but rather in its articulation of formal relationships and symbolic gestures through light, form, and spatial organization. Editor: It’s almost an abstraction when you think of it like that, stripping away context and just looking at form and light. I hadn’t considered it before.