Looking through the Ferris Wheel, near the top 1893

Curator: Looking at this 1893 stereograph, "Looking through the Ferris Wheel, near the top," by Henry Hamilton Bennett, I'm immediately struck by its unsettling beauty. What do you make of this perspective? Editor: There is an undeniable grandeur, yet also a kind of anxious industrial web. This Ferris wheel seems like a giant, mechanical eye, staring out and capturing the world with geometrical severity. Its metal latticework forms a strong pattern but feels caged in its execution. Curator: Bennett’s vantage point offers a unique consideration of space, and moreover, of social dynamics during this time. As we see from this photograph held by the Art Institute of Chicago, world’s fairs were expressions of industrial progress, but they also embodied the social stratification embedded in American society and technology. Who benefitted? Who was excluded? Editor: You're right, that industrial symbolism is powerful. In this moment when so much ingenuity and confidence were on display for the nation, looking upward to a great engineering feat embodies progress and perhaps an element of aspirational wonder. Curator: This piece also provokes a deeper examination of Chicago itself. Bennett’s capturing of the cityscape challenges notions of whose stories are foregrounded during this pivotal point of reconstruction after the fire. While some voices were celebrated, the lives of many others remained, and remain, obscured in the historical shadows. Editor: So, it also presents that duality of celebrating human advancement whilst questioning its motives and what it means to exist in the shadows that advancement may create. A moment of possibility but simultaneously an insight into disparity. Curator: It's a valuable reflection on progress. Seeing the layers of urban society intertwined through this metal behemoth is, in essence, America wrestling with itself. Editor: It feels more like peering into a manufactured, metal-clad version of nature—a symbolic cage, perhaps—through which we examine the changing world and our ambitions to scale even higher into its possibilities. A poignant metaphor for the world, still relevant today.