Gezicht op de Saldanha Marinhostraat in Manaus, Brazilië 1898 - 1935

Editor: This is a photograph by George Huebner, taken sometime between 1898 and 1935. It's titled "Gezicht op de Saldanha Marinhostraat in Manaus, Brazilië," or "View of Saldanha Marinho Street in Manaus, Brazil." It's a pretty straightforward street scene, very realist. What captures your attention when you look at it? Curator: Well, straightaway I’m drawn to the… stillness, perhaps. It feels like a paused moment, a world holding its breath. Notice how the light, or lack of strong contrast, flattens everything, almost abstracting the scene. It transforms the everyday street into something…else. Does it trigger something in you, emotionally? Editor: It makes me think about the passage of time. The architecture looks old, even in the photo. I guess I am thinking about then versus now and the layers of history, right? Curator: Precisely! Photography, even then, had this power, didn’t it? Freezing a fragment of time, which becomes a ghost of a memory almost instantly. The composition, that receding street… Do you notice how your eye is forced down its length? What do you suppose that signifies, if anything? Editor: It creates depth, sure, but it almost feels like it’s pulling you away from the present of the photo, toward… the future of that street? Curator: Perhaps. Or the past, maybe a yearning for a simpler time that might not ever have existed, a fabrication or collective memory, what we all bring into these little time capsules. Even in its ‘realism’ – and I use that term lightly, do we think it's posed? – Huebner injects a quiet dreamscape. Don't you think? Editor: It's like he documented a world and invented it at the same time. I never would have thought about that. It feels like so much more than just a photograph. Curator: And it *is* so much more, which is what I love most of all. Each look reveals new layers!