Interieur van de kathedraal te Monreale, Sicilië 1857 - 1914

Curator: There's such a beautiful somberness in this photograph. What is it we're seeing? Editor: This gelatin-silver print captures the interior of the cathedral at Monreale in Sicily, Italy, as rendered through the lens of Giorgio Sommer. Though Sommer worked between 1857 and 1914, I find it especially fascinating to look at an older visual rendering such as this of the Cathedral, since photography as a medium always engages questions of authenticity of space. Curator: Authenticity in capturing sacred space – an interesting idea, especially since cathedrals themselves function as curated symbolic universes. Those columns rising into the arches… do you get a sense of visual echo there? It’s not just the architecture, it’s how Sommer’s chosen angle seems to amplify a feeling of almost infinite architectural repetitions. Editor: Yes, and those repetitions are key to understanding power and ritual, aren't they? Look at the scale here. Sommer positions the viewer, perhaps deliberately, to feel dwarfed. It's about establishing the church as this unyielding socio-political and spiritual entity. The gaze emphasizes the structure. Curator: Exactly, it evokes the sense of power relations, yes, but more viscerally for me: an undeniable call to something higher than ourselves. I feel myself almost instinctively bowing the head, you know? Editor: That speaks to the enduring strength of such imagery, even when mediated through photography. Sommer, as a documentarian, becomes a participant in perpetuating those visual power structures. I’m drawn to think about the ways this picture entered popular imagination about Sicilian architecture. What narratives did it create, or reinforce? Curator: Oh, undoubtedly it participates in crafting that visual rhetoric! Though beyond rhetoric, for those immersed in that cultural symbolism it could unlock real emotional access points to the divine... a continuity, if you like. Editor: Continuity forged by conscious construction through architectural scale, pictorial framing, and the selective traditions they signify. I look at it with a sense of how spaces become heritage, visually presented through very political framing choices. Curator: And I look at it seeing not only how it became, but how it remains – that deep reverberation in the human spirit. Editor: Indeed. I think this gives one so much to contemplate about the ever evolving world of iconography.