Exterieur van een villa, vermoedelijk in de regio Genua c. 1870 - 1890

Curator: Here we have Celestino Degoix’s "Exterior of a Villa, Presumably in the Genoa Region," an albumen print dating from around 1870 to 1890. It has a palpable sense of time about it, a preserved stillness. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: The materiality strikes me first. Look at that delicate tonality. Albumen printing, of course, creates such a subtle range – the details practically emerge from the paper itself. There is an implied opulence. Curator: Indeed. The architectural grandeur, set within what looks like an abundant, tended garden. The villa itself looms, but not menacingly. It carries the symbols of wealth, but also perhaps a lived, familial history. Editor: I agree about the wealth. These staircases wouldn’t just *appear*. Labor, material, quarrying – there are complex stories of social power embedded within those meticulously laid stones. Curator: But those steps! Consider how stairs appear often as transformative symbols, a connection between different levels of existence, the villa to the landscape. Does it evoke upward aspiration or the burden of legacy? Editor: More burden than aspiration, I suspect. Those meticulously built levels shout to me of resources consumed. Photography, at this point, becomes a means of documenting privilege – almost enshrining it. Who did this image serve? Curator: Perhaps Degoix saw beauty in structure and light, a captured moment of serenity in that coastal region. We can also wonder if Degoix's use of a 'natural palette' signifies his adherence to the conventions of Realism in the later 19th century. Editor: Maybe. But Realism still gets rendered through someone’s vision, and someone else's lens. These 'villas', this landscaping – that tells a far more complicated story about labor and taste of that era than this composition can visually disclose. Curator: Fair enough. Still, the echoes of an era captured, inviting us to contemplate not only what we see but also how that image continues to reflect our present. Editor: Exactly. Material culture, social standing and artifice – the villa embodies all three, and reminds us what is lost when the frame obscures what’s really happening on the ground.