Gezicht op San Giorgio Maggiore te Venetië c. 1850 - 1880

Curator: It's always captivating to encounter early photographic images like this albumen print, “Gezicht op San Giorgio Maggiore te Venetië” - or, "View of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice." It likely dates between 1850 and 1880 and the studio mark indicates C. Coen & Figlio produced it. Editor: It feels melancholic somehow. Venice often does, but the sepia tones here deepen that wistfulness. It is so precise yet blurry around the edges. A dreamy picture, really. Curator: Dreamy is right. This Venetian view has a foot in both worlds; we have an imposing steamship in the foreground, signaling modern advances. But it is framed by the timeless vista of the island with its church and campanile, rendered in soft focus. It feels… hesitant. Editor: The buildings appear to be floating. Perhaps that's due to the perspective; it seems captured from slightly above sea level. Makes me wonder what sort of apparatus was required back then, to make such an image! But the water reflecting the buildings makes for some visual doubling... like the reflection of archetypes from the past. Curator: This visual doubling is certainly there to amplify symbolic depth. We also see strong geometry – that bold division of space with water and building planes. Even the ship’s mast rising diagonally plays into this architectural precision! One immediately thinks of the power structures that dominated Venice then. The city itself becomes a sort of icon, an idea. Editor: Icons are inherently reproducible, as well. What are your thoughts on its function as a souvenir image of Venice? It speaks to Venice as a kind of paradise on Earth; a must-see destination forever enshrined in photography and pictorialist trends. Curator: You've hit it precisely on the head. And here we find photography contributing to the city’s legend as an eternal spectacle. A place both of memory, but always resolutely of the present, always shifting with those beautiful, mercurial tides. Editor: Exactly. Now, all I crave is to be lost somewhere in the watery heart of that scene.