Droogmaking der Plassen in Schieland, beoosten Rotterdam Possibly 1869

Curator: This gelatin silver print is titled "Droogmaking der Plassen in Schieland, beoosten Rotterdam," which translates to "Draining of the Lakes in Schieland, east of Rotterdam," attributed to Jacobus van Gorkom Jr. possibly around 1869. Editor: Bleakly beautiful. A melancholic monumentality, I'd say. It's industrial, stark, yet oddly romantic. Like a half-sunken beast caught mid-transformation. Curator: Indeed. It depicts an early land reclamation project in the Netherlands. We're looking at a pivotal moment in their hydraulic engineering history—an era when humans began to drastically reshape the Dutch landscape. Notice how the drainage installation, along with the group of people gathered around it, emphasize a growing faith in industrial innovation and modernization. Editor: Makes you wonder about those folks, though. Poised stiffly for the camera, a world caught between hard labour and technological wonder. All that sepia... It whispers of progress, yes, but with a deep hum of human toil. And also what we might describe today as environmental transformation—I bet it displaced some bitterns. Curator: That’s right. Photography during this time often served not just documentation purposes but was also linked with notions of progress, social ordering, and exerting power over nature. The almost stylized way that everything's composed points to how landscapes were being recorded and shaped. Editor: It's a slice of captured ambition—both incredibly grand and touchingly ordinary at once. Curator: Looking at it now, over a century later, there's a haunting beauty about how technology alters our world... sometimes it brings us places, other times, displaces nature and humanity. Editor: Precisely. An elegant, if muted, elegy for a vanishing landscape… or, perhaps, a bold promise of a new one. What a potent photo.