Monument voor Wolfe en Montcalm, Québec 1924 - 1926

J. Dearden Holmes made this photograph of the Wolfe and Montcalm Monument in Québec using a camera and some photographic paper. What strikes me about this image is the duplication of the monument. It's almost like a stereoscopic image, creating a subtle sense of depth and volume. The sepia tone lends it a kind of nostalgic air, like a memory fading at the edges. Look at the monument itself: a stark, unadorned obelisk. It's solid, geometric, and yet, in this photographic treatment, it feels almost ephemeral. The bare trees surrounding it add to this sense of temporal ambiguity, as if caught between seasons. The texture of the print is smooth, almost like vellum, which contrasts with the rough-hewn stone of the monument. This contrast highlights the process of mediation involved in photography, where the real is transformed into an image, a representation, a ghost of its former self. It reminds me of the work of Eugène Atget, who photographed the vanishing architecture of Paris with a similar sense of melancholic beauty. Art is an ongoing conversation like that, always looking backward and forwards at the same time.