Gezicht op het Palazzo Farnese te Rome 1860 - 1881

Giacomo Brogi made this photograph of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome sometime in the second half of the 19th century. Photography at this time was a complex process, involving the careful coating and development of glass plates. It was also becoming increasingly industrialized. In this image, the Palazzo dominates. Think of the vast amounts of labor that went into the construction of this massive building in the 16th Century: quarrying the stone, transporting it, carving it, and assembling it into a structure that proclaims wealth and power. Brogi's photograph subtly captures this sense of overwhelming scale, the hard, repetitive work of constructing a society. The photograph itself mirrors this process, albeit on a different scale. Each print was the result of a chemical process, yet the final effect is immediate. By drawing our attention to the built environment, Brogi asks us to consider the labor and social structures embedded in both the image and the architecture it represents.