Ruïne van het Teatro Greco in Taormina, Italië 1857 - 1914

Curator: We’re standing before Giorgio Sommer's "Ruïne van het Teatro Greco in Taormina, Italië," a gelatin silver print made sometime between 1857 and 1914, currently held in the Rijksmuseum collection. Editor: My immediate feeling? It’s profoundly melancholic. Those shattered stones…they speak volumes about the fleeting nature of glory, don't they? Curator: Absolutely. The ruin becomes a potent symbol of temporal decline, echoing the transience of human endeavor. What intrigues me is the way Sommer frames the theater's bones. He presents us with a ghostly cityscape, a stage now only inhabited by echoes. Note the almost clinical quality of the light. Editor: Clinical but strangely romantic. I mean, I feel an undeniable sense of romance, even a touch of drama. Look at the lone figure framed in that central archway. Is that a soul lost in time? It certainly seems staged! Perhaps they were strategically positioned for this very effect of melancholy. Curator: A carefully positioned "genius loci," perhaps? Reminding us that ancient places hold a certain kind of power over us? In a ruin, even chaos contains meaning, doesn’t it? Those scattered blocks tell a story as eloquent as any written history. Editor: Precisely! And you know, thinking of stages, it feels like we're peering into the past as actors in our own present play. Does it influence our view of ourselves and our current predicament somehow, this echo from so long ago? Are we the tiny figures someday soon standing in someone else's romantic view of *our* former glory? Curator: It’s a haunting reminder that we, too, are writing our own histories that will one day stand ruined. The weight of all that has come before bears down. Sommer has created a beautiful meditation on time and legacy. Editor: So much so. It seems it is now my time to meditate on all that has been said here today! Thanks. Curator: Likewise!