Gezicht op Fiesole, gezien vanuit Florence before 1863

Editor: This is "Gezicht op Fiesole, gezien vanuit Florence" – a view of Fiesole from Florence – created before 1863 by Giacomo Brogi. It's a photograph, specifically an albumen-silver print, and it feels… oddly formal, like a carefully staged postcard. What strikes you about it? Curator: Well, let's think about the albumen-silver printing process itself. Creating this image required significant labor – the preparation of the glass plate negative, the coating with albumen derived from egg whites, the printing itself... This wasn’t a snapshot; it involved considerable material resources and skill. Editor: I see what you mean. It wasn't as simple as point-and-shoot. Curator: Exactly. Brogi was producing these views, not just as art, but as commodities for a growing tourist market. The image becomes a product, its value tied to its reproducibility and its function within a developing tourist economy. How does that change your view of its formality? Editor: That's fascinating. I initially saw it as rigid, but now I'm thinking about it as carefully constructed, a deliberate selling of a certain romantic vision. The very *process* of making it shaped that vision. Curator: Precisely. We must consider the albumen print, not only for its aesthetic qualities, but for the means of labor it represents. Editor: So it is like the production process *is* part of the story. Curator: And its place in the material culture of tourism – How the material properties and the making shapes our understanding and reception. We can think about where it was sold, how much it cost, and how it was viewed compared to other images or items available at the time. These all matter to a complete view. Editor: I’ll never look at old photographs the same way again. Considering the materials and production gives a whole new layer of meaning.