Medial moraine on the Ober Aletsch glacier before 1866

Editor: This gelatin-silver print, titled "Medial moraine on the Ober Aletsch glacier," was taken by Ernest Edwards sometime before 1866. It looks like it is adhered to the pages of a book. The mountain looks desolate but monumental. How do you interpret this work? Curator: The glacier itself carries so much symbolic weight. Ice, historically, is associated with purity and preservation, but glaciers are also monuments to deep time, geological processes far beyond human comprehension. What does the presence of a glacier signify here in relation to the figure in the frame? Is it a sense of vulnerability, awe, or perhaps resilience? Editor: The small figure standing on the glacier almost seems defiant in the face of such an immense natural force. Curator: Exactly. And consider the medium itself. Photography in the 19th century was often used to document and classify the world. What is being documented here? A scientific phenomenon? Or is Edwards trying to capture something more… the sublime power of nature, the insignificance of the individual? Editor: I hadn't thought about photography as a way to try and capture the sublime. Curator: Think of how artists have long depicted storms, floods, and great mountains as evidence of forces beyond ourselves. And now here is a photo doing much the same thing. Do you see anything symbolic in the lines and textures of the glacier itself? Editor: The striations in the ice almost look like marks on a scroll, like they could be read. Curator: Precisely. It's as if the landscape is trying to communicate some message from the depths of time, made visible to those who can read its symbols. Editor: That is a helpful way of viewing this piece - a landscape as a symbolic text! Curator: Indeed, it reminds us how landscapes have been invested with symbolic meanings far beyond simple representation. It invites us to interpret the weight of a glacier in a new way.