Landschap nabij Goslar before 1903

Curator: This gelatin-silver print, a photograph titled "Landschap nabij Goslar," captures a landscape near Goslar and dates to before 1903; its author is Hildegard Lehnert. What's your initial response to it? Editor: Stark! There's a haunting, almost lunar quality to this vista. It feels desolate yet there's an undeniable sense of space—as if time itself could echo across this monochrome tableau. Curator: I'm drawn to the artist’s use of light. The composition appears deceptively simple; one might call it classically structured, the lines pulling you from a kind of obscured foreground up into that vanishing point somewhere over the horizon. Editor: Ah yes, I note also a deliberate use of texture—especially in the foreground. These textures not only play with the diffusion of light, giving the foreground a blurry effect, but draw into question the subject-object relationship in photography as a medium, that the act of photographical capture cannot remove subjectivity and affect. We may not quite know whether what we are viewing is something man-made, some natural artifact, or whether Lehnert may even have purposefully blurred this part of the image as if to draw focus to the vanishing point ahead. Curator: That uncertainty makes me think. You mention a vanishing point ahead. The pathway in this work makes one reflect, right? Is there an idea of passage present, and what may the photograph hint at that awaits at the vanishing point you mentioned? A new chapter perhaps. It also inspires reflections about the journey itself – how Lehnert forces one to confront the unknown on one's life journey. There’s an evocative, poetic loneliness. It's fascinating how a cityscape from this period could still speak so directly to contemporary feelings. Editor: Exactly. A landscape pregnant with possibilities but also loss, I suppose; one is in essence peering at a photograph both melancholic and suggestive of promise at once. It stands as a remarkable meditation on time, transformation, and the elusive nature of perception. I am inspired. Curator: And how she did this over a century ago with such incredible precision. An amazing photograph, and insight.