Route de Pierrefitte à Luz St Sauveur 1853

Editor: Here we have Joseph Vigier's "Route de Pierrefitte à Luz St Sauveur," an albumen print from 1853. The curving road and steep mountainside give the photograph a rather dramatic feel. What do you see in this piece? Curator: What strikes me is the tension between the romantic depiction of nature and the intervention of the road. We need to consider the implications of this new infrastructure on the landscape and on the lives of those who inhabited it. Who benefited from this road, and at what cost to the environment and local communities? Editor: So you're thinking about it as a marker of societal change and progress? Curator: Precisely. Consider that photography itself, emerging in the 19th century, becomes a tool for documenting, promoting, and ultimately normalizing these transformations. Does the lone figure on the road symbolize something about this transformation? Is this romanticism or is there a kind of erasure going on here? Editor: I see what you mean. The photograph is beautiful, but it doesn’t necessarily show the full story or impact. Curator: Right. The visual allure of Romanticism can obscure the social and environmental realities of the time. Consider also how landscape photography, even today, continues to shape our perception and relationship with the natural world, often promoting certain ideologies. It makes you think about tourism, right? Editor: That’s a perspective I hadn’t considered. It highlights how important it is to think critically about art beyond just its surface appearance. Curator: Absolutely! Art gives us a way into thinking more broadly about intersectional perspectives—race, class, gender—and how systems of power influence our understanding of the world, even a landscape. Editor: I will never look at another landscape the same way again. Thanks for sharing your insightful perspective.