Viaduct des Fades in aanbouw over de Sioule in de Auvergne 1904

This albumen print shows the construction of Viaduct des Fades in the Auvergne. You can see the pillars going up, and the way they're building it into the landscape. I bet Delizy stood there, maybe with a tripod, thinking about how to capture this moment of intense transformation. The cool thing about photographs is the detail and the tonality. It’s all there, but the image still asks us to imagine what it felt like to be present. What was going through Delizy’s head? Were they focused on the engineering feat, the sheer scale of the project? Were they more interested in the way the light played on the landscape? Maybe they thought of themselves as part of a broader conversation, recording the moment for posterity. Artists always bounce ideas off of each other like that. Whether you like it or not, you’re part of a conversation! And, like, this is just one step in an ongoing process.