Sassenpoort te Zwolle before 1894

This photogravure of the Sassenpoort in Zwolle, Netherlands was made by Charles L. Mitchell sometime in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. As a photographic image of a medieval gate, it presents something of a paradox. Medieval gates like this one were, of course, instruments of defense and control, markers of the boundary between the relative safety of the city and the perils of the outside world. By the time this photograph was made, however, such gates had largely lost their military function. The question, then, is what work an image like this was intended to do. Was it simply an exercise in nostalgia? Or, was it a way of making the institutions of the city seem venerable and timeless? To answer these questions, we need to know more about the photographer, the context in which the image was made, and the kinds of viewers it was intended to reach.