Interieur van het Kartuizerklooster van Sint-Martinus te Napels, Italië 1857 - 1914

This photograph shows the interior of the Carthusian Monastery of St. Martin in Naples, Italy, and was taken by Giorgio Sommer. Sommer, a German photographer based in Italy, captured the country's archaeological sites, landscapes, and artworks for the burgeoning tourist trade. Sommer's work exists within a colonial context, where the European gaze exoticized and commodified the Italian landscape and its cultural heritage. The photograph aestheticizes the monastery’s architecture, but what stories remain untold? What about the monks who lived and worked there, their daily rituals, their complex relationship to faith, labor, and community? Consider how this image flattens the experience of the space into a visual commodity. Sommer’s photographs catered to the desires of European and American tourists, shaping their understanding of Italy through carefully curated images. How might we disrupt this historical gaze and imagine the space through the lives of those who inhabited it?