Gipsmodellen voor kariatiden op het Palais du Louvre door Victor Vilain c. 1855 - 1857

Editor: Right now, we’re looking at a gelatin silver print, “Gipsmodellen voor kariatiden op het Palais du Louvre door Victor Vilain,” by Edouard Baldus, from around 1855 to 1857. These are photographs of plaster models of caryatids. There's something a little eerie about them, a little too posed, a little too perfect. What catches your eye about this image? Curator: Well, it's interesting you say that. To me, these caryatids whispering from the past have such a curious stoicism and also vulnerability about them. We are, after all, looking at preparatory models here. They're caught in a moment before their 'forever' forms become etched in stone to carry heavy historical lintels. There is this raw kind of quality that, knowing what we do now about photography, brings a bit of the cadaver about them...the art-historical 'corpse', if you will! Does that ring true for you at all? Editor: I see what you mean. It’s that ‘caught in between’ feeling, a shadow between concept and completion, very clever indeed! But why photograph them at all? Was it just documentation? Curator: Perhaps! But the photographic image, then a burgeoning art form, gives us a flattened, democratic, almost scientific viewpoint to this neo-Classical project and their 'heroic' origins. Plus, think of it, dear editor. These forms, these women… forever upholding structural burdens in silent beauty, captured by light. Baldus has gifted them a certain weight, hasn't he? They aren't light muses to behold. Editor: True, it’s not how I initially saw them. Seeing the pre-sculpture in stark photographic tones... well, you’ve given me so much to consider about process and history! Curator: Ah, that's the beauty of art, isn’t it? The shifting sands of perception beneath our feet.