No. 135. Iowa State Penitentiary - Fort Madison, Iowa 1891

Editor: We’re looking at Henry Bosse's "No. 135. Iowa State Penitentiary - Fort Madison, Iowa" from 1891, made using a gelatin-silver print. It’s so blue! It feels almost dreamlike, yet it depicts a prison. What catches your eye in this work? Curator: It's fascinating how the very process and material here mediate our understanding. Bosse, an engineer, embraced photography's reproducibility, but look at the *hand* in the gelatin-silver process. Each print involves distinct labor. It asks, what is the cost of producing these images? Also, is it mass production or the value in the printing process that makes this so intriguing? Editor: The "hand" of the worker, the labor of crafting each print, yes, that adds another dimension. But why depict a prison? Curator: Exactly! Consider the social context. Prisons, then and now, are about control and confinement. Bosse's choice of this subject implicates photography itself. It's capturing, framing, and in a way, containing its subject. It questions if there are ways he used the space, process, and perspective of landscape photography, to reflect an oppressive reality? Editor: That makes me see the beauty differently. The technical artistry is clear, but now it seems subtly critical. Curator: Precisely. Bosse's choice of subject and the very materials he employs push us to think about not just the “what” of the image but the “how” and “why” of its making in its specific socio-political moment. This highlights that even with photographs, an assumed realism does not exist, and one may still have to look critically. Editor: It's made me realize there's a story within the materials and production of this image as powerful as what the picture shows on the surface. Thanks for the insight!