Noors berg en zee landschapgezien vanaf een schip 1889

Curator: Taking a wistful glance at this seascape, a silver gelatin print titled “Noors berg en zee landschapgezien vanaf een schip”– or in English, “Norwegian mountain and sea landscape seen from a ship.” Captured in 1889 by Paul Güssfeldt, the grainy photograph feels like a quiet echo across time, doesn’t it? Editor: It absolutely does. The mood is what hits me first – that silvery stillness. It feels more like a faded memory than a concrete landscape, doesn't it? I notice the rigging of the ship immediately, the rope almost cuts the image, the chain and pully drawing a diagonal. Curator: Precisely! The composition almost stages a drama. Güssfeldt, more renowned as a geographer and mountaineer, approaches photography, perhaps, as a mode of geographic surveying... yet through soft focus we could muse on a transient moment– and that low horizon really makes the misty mountains sing, doesn't it? Editor: I'm so glad you mention this "mistiness". You know that the process in silver gelatin printing meant the images could be mass-produced, it became really available. The focus then, the lack of one, I find particularly relevant. Was Güssfeldt making something easily consumed or creating a moment suspended in time and materials? Curator: What an intriguing challenge you present! Is he then, just another adventurer cashing in, or an alchemist playing with light? What do you feel the materiality suggests to you in regards to your interpretation of the subject? Editor: For me the real intrigue in a silver gelatin print, is how its value increases as a unique moment that will never return; made en masse from industrial materials! The means are always relevant! Curator: Exactly! Now as we prepare to sail onwards I find this reminds us of all those adventurers both great and small whose labor brings us this very chance to dream a bit… perhaps while listening to podcasts even. Editor: Hear, hear! The dialogue between artistry, commerce and experience can never truly be complete. Onwards!