Poort van de Collegiale kerk Onze-Lieve-Vrouw en Domitianus van Hoei, België before 1887

Curator: This photographic print, dating from before 1887, captures the portal of the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame and Domitian in Huy, Belgium. Editor: It’s powerfully solemn. The way the light etches itself onto every crevice of the stone… it feels like the weight of history, all compressed into this single view. Curator: Absolutely. The photograph's strength lies in revealing the architectural details of the entryway. Note the intricate carvings above the archway depicting scenes of the adoration. Photography was, in its early stages, closely aligned with documentation, creating records for a wider audience of cultural heritage and craft. Editor: I am immediately drawn to those carvings, too. They seem so dense, tightly packed and wonderfully animated. Each tiny figure teems with stories; do you think, by seeing that level of craft, visitors were brought closer to a sacred moment, in the place where the secular became holy? Curator: Perhaps, but it also served as a visual reminder of the social order. Cathedrals and churches were major employers, driving entire local economies. They created the need for materials like stone and timber, which demanded quarrymen, transporters and sawyers, while their embellishment spurred monumental developments in painting, sculpting and, as we see here, stonemasonry. The church shaped all the labour involved in production. Editor: It’s amazing how a static image can speak to such a grand scale of materials and effort… Almost makes you want to touch the rough stone. The photo almost breathes like it might shift to let me pass through, into some other dimension or world. Curator: The contrast between the ornately decorated archway and the street receding into the background certainly plays with perspective. This photo captures a fascinating point of intersection between sacred space and everyday life. Editor: The sacred merging into something we understand on an instinctive level, where materials echo what we are… Yes, seeing this makes me remember our history is tactile, real, carved out of the world itself.