Gezicht op het Koninklijk Weeshuis te Buren 1890 - 1920

Curator: Let's consider this photograph, "Gezicht op het Koninklijk Weeshuis te Buren," taken sometime between 1890 and 1920 by an anonymous photographer working for Monumentenzorg. Editor: It’s bathed in this dreamlike sepia, and despite its grand subject—a Royal Orphanage—it has a strangely hushed quality, doesn’t it? The composition is very static. Curator: The orphanage is depicted as solid and enduring, almost timeless. It seems intentional, a way of projecting stability, tradition and perhaps the weight of royal history onto a place dedicated to care. What sort of emotional affect did you observe in this image? Editor: Beyond that sepia filter, I find myself really stuck on the rigid geometry of the architecture. The repetitive windows, the neat rows of dormers in the roof…there is little variation here, creating visual boredom. Curator: I’m curious about your read as creating 'visual boredom'. For many viewers in that period, the order and symmetry visible in the architectural design could well communicate values deeply entrenched within the institution itself. Its visual language serves to represent predictability. The careful composition is echoed within that of Monumentenzorg. Editor: Yes, but the soft-focus photography mutes all the sharper architectural elements; I'm struggling to establish focus anywhere. I'm less moved than perhaps intended. It almost feels posed, constructed... an image of reality rather than reality itself. Curator: Precisely, and it gets to the symbolic role these institutions held and the values they represented. Editor: Yes. And I get caught by the light, reflecting the intended hope the place tried to bring in this new artificial construction of a home, rather than a family to be placed there. What else have we seen here that creates an imprint and affects an atmosphere and visual continuity? Curator: So, thinking beyond just aesthetics, the image, like so many depictions of institutional buildings from this period, tells us so much about social ideas concerning security, childhood, order. Editor: A fascinating sliver of social architecture captured between glass and silver. I'll reflect more upon that continuity of light in relationship with how the visual history of light shapes understanding in later views.