Bospad met karrensporen in Trossachs c. 1870 - 1886

Curator: James Valentine’s gelatin silver print, dating from around 1870 to 1886, takes us to "Bospad met karrensporen in Trossachs"—Forest path with cart tracks in the Trossachs, held here at the Rijksmuseum. It’s really beautiful! Editor: It's a compelling image, no question, almost monochromatic with sepia tones. There is an emptiness that permeates through me, I imagine that the Trossachs mountains, that remote place in the Scottish Highlands, it's almost haunting and definitely feels old-fashioned to me. Curator: Old-fashioned in the most alluring sense, perhaps. Valentine was a master of pictorialism, so there's an almost painterly softness to the image, like a Constable painting. But as the title reveals, the very visible cart tracks ground it in reality, the labor. The path appears like the veins on our hands. Editor: That's right. Look closely and you can practically hear the wheels grinding on the path. The print emphasizes how labor and travel sculpt the landscape. It isn't about some untouched wilderness, this romantic era landscape is also an operational route that serves the transportation, social, and economic demands of a nation. Curator: Exactly! I like how that practicality meets artistry in the gelatin-silver print method itself. I picture the delicate chemical baths, the careful manipulations to conjure this ethereal quality from essentially raw materials. In fact, Valentine and other artists of this period pushed photography from the role of documentation, the simple click, into something evocative, emotional… a new medium with romantic intention. Editor: Which raises some important questions, especially now, in the 21st century, as images circulate instantly in various platforms—are we documenting or emoting when capturing our surroundings? It prompts us to interrogate and investigate our production and consumption of images in the here and now. Curator: True, but I choose to linger a moment longer, and simply find the inherent calm beauty of a Scottish wooded path rendered in Valentine’s print. It serves as a visual portal in both image and object. Editor: For me, I see beyond the woods into the artist’s intentional process, how the work, material, and labor have marked history and consciousness and how we navigate images and memory now.