A glimpse of the fleet 1908

Curator: Geldolph Adriaan Kessler's "A Glimpse of the Fleet," captured in 1908 using the gelatin silver print method. What a brooding image! Editor: Brooding is the word. That dense sky just presses down. I feel the dampness just looking at it. The aging, bleached wood of the pier really gives the composition an earthy, materialist counterpoint to those ephemeral clouds and vague, far-off ships. Curator: It’s interesting how he balances the tangible—that pier you're drawn to—with the almost dreamlike quality of the ships on the horizon. I get a real sense of longing. Almost as if the ships represent something unattainable, always just out of reach. It's evocative of change. Editor: Or, perhaps, it's simply a photograph meticulously staged, constructed out of light, silver, gelatin. Each step in the process involves particular human interventions; mining silver, gelatin made with the boiled bones of slaughtered animals… Even the seascape itself is manufactured in response to resource extraction, like colonialism and fishing economies. What kind of statement do you think Kessler was trying to make using these technologies of labor and power? Curator: Hmm, those are really potent considerations I hadn’t considered! For me, that distance—rendered in shades of grey—creates space for imagination. It's about the individual's experience within a larger, somewhat mysterious world, an era in change... the power of industrial advancement, right? But I agree with you about the material, tangible reality of it—I like how that adds weight. Editor: Exactly! Even thinking about it physically existing in the Rijksmuseum, you consider how this print was stabilized, developed in specific chemical processes by particular people… it’s amazing. Curator: Right! Thanks to our perspectives, I'm taking with me now is a new appreciation for its delicate balance of the material world and intangible human experience! It captures so much more than a "glimpse." Editor: Indeed. The complex layering of intention and happenstance inherent to the photographic and development process is stunning. Every print pulled is its own special iteration of history, artistry, and sheer industrial making.