Spoorbrug over de rivier Itanculo in Mozambique na reparatiewerkzaamheden c. 1886s

Curator: Here we have a photograph titled "Spoorbrug over de rivier Itanculo in Mozambique na reparatiewerkzaamheden," dating back to the 1880s, credited to Manuel Romão Pereira. It’s a print mounted on paper. What's your first impression? Editor: Stark. Beautiful in its starkness. That creamy, faded sepia tone just gives it a ghostly, ethereal feel. You almost feel like you are peering through time. A forgotten moment. The composition is simple, almost brutally so. Just the bridge and the landscape. Curator: The railway and the bridge themselves became important symbols of colonial ambition and control. To photograph them wasn't just about documenting the landscape, but also about displaying power, transformation, and a very particular vision of progress. Editor: A progress built on what cost, though, right? Look at the wear in this aged paper, how the details in the grass are barely visible. It speaks to me of the human cost…those unseen hands who built that bridge under a blazing sun in a foreign land. It is beautiful, but loaded with melancholic history. Curator: Indeed. And thinking about how these images circulated back then, how they reinforced a certain narrative in Europe. It also brings to light the role photography played in constructing that colonial narrative, that kind of... idealized image of Mozambique, separate from what was really happening to those communities and the land. Editor: Almost makes you want to reach out and touch the photograph, doesn't it? Connect with what remains unsaid. What is interesting to me is the photograph does feel "of the time." Even someone like Pereira, acting almost as an instrument for colonization, captured at a moment a ghost that still haunts the picture. A bit of the soul rises. Curator: Well, thanks, that adds such a richness. It reminds us that art—even in the service of power—can unintentionally capture and hint at complexities we're still grappling with today. Editor: Definitely leaves you thinking... about how we look, what we see, and, more importantly, what we choose to remember. Thanks for showing this, I think it has made me think a bit different about railway photos.