Gezicht op de haven van Port Said c. 1880 - 1900

Curator: What strikes you first about this print? Editor: A kind of serene industriousness. So much detail packed into a muted palette – ships bristling with masts, solid buildings along the quay, and the promise of adventures over the horizon. Curator: The work, from approximately 1880-1900, is titled "Gezicht op de haven van Port Said," or "View of the Port of Port Said" if we're speaking English, and is an albumen print by C. & G. Zangaki, held at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: Albumen. Funny word. You can almost smell the sea air mixed with...preservatives. The print style lends a ghostly quality. Each form, carefully captured, almost fading. How does the Orientalist label sit with you here? Curator: The composition emphasizes a constructed "otherness," which reflects Western expectations and fantasies about the East. Note the way architectural elements are arranged. This romanticized exoticism speaks to broader European assumptions and desires during this era. The very act of photographing here is also crucial. Editor: I’d call it complex and charged; Zangaki was a Greek and Egyptian photography partnership working in Port Said and Cairo; it complicates that West/East binary a bit. This photograph seems a little in love with its own time, the age of steam and exploration, yet already antique in the silvery tones of the albumen. Curator: The sepia tones serve to create distance. Look at the distribution of dark and light. The print itself functions as a sign, mediating our access to that historical moment. Editor: Agreed. There’s a sadness, perhaps in knowing those grand ships, that very version of globalization, wouldn't last. I appreciate seeing something of such carefulness made amidst the tides of momentous events and cultural shifts. Curator: It reveals a world of expanding horizons—both literal and symbolic—laden with all the complexities and ambiguities inherent in intercultural exchange and representation. Editor: I come away from this feeling quietly hopeful, almost dreaming of departures and arrivals. It reminds us that pictures can tell a different kind of truth.