Gezicht op riet voor een water before 1898

Curator: Let’s discuss Pierre Dubreuil’s photographic print from before 1898, "Gezicht op riet voor een water," which translates to "View of Reeds by Water." It’s a gelatin-silver print. What strikes you initially about this piece? Editor: A stillness. A near silence. The composition, with the vertical emphasis of the reeds, focuses the eye, almost as though drawing breath before a moment of quiet meditation. Curator: That resonates with the pictorialist style Dubreuil embraced. Pictorialism championed artistic intention in photography, rebelling against the purely documentary use of the medium. It gained acceptance through exhibits. The brotherhood of the Linked Ring society, promoting the ideal in Europe starting in 1892. Dubreuil began to receive awards almost immediately. Editor: Indeed. Reeds themselves are incredibly symbolic. In many cultures, they represent flexibility and resilience, bending but not breaking in the face of adversity. And water? Well, water often represents the subconscious, the ebb and flow of emotions. There’s a dreamlike quality. Curator: The impressionistic influence is palpable too. Notice how the soft focus blurs the background, prioritizing mood and atmosphere. The scene becomes more about evoking a feeling than precisely documenting a location. Editor: Absolutely. And light – that hazy, almost ethereal light could stand in for spiritual illumination. One sees that same glow in religious paintings or mystical imagery from several traditions. Here the single sun could be easily taken as moon by some viewers. Curator: Early photography had to contend with fine art's more respected, painterly values. So techniques that mimicked those values in established artworks, that blurred the "mechanical" into feeling, could become critical to photography’s cultural ascension and to a specific photographer’s artistic credibility. It might become how photography was permitted to expand from recording information into a form of making Art. Editor: Very true, Dubreuil here almost speaks to the soul by using the bare minimum to invoke a sense of being still, observing the slow rhythm of a natural setting. His is very effective use of the landscape as vessel. The eye follows the verticals to find stillness by an isolated pool. It speaks to a sense of serenity. Curator: A valuable reminder that beyond the technical aspects and historical contexts, it's that individual, emotional response to the image that keeps art relevant. Editor: Agreed. A deceptively simple image opens up to reveal layers of meaning and evokes very calm sense of place and atmosphere.