Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul te Marseille in aanbouw 1855 - 1860

Curator: Here, we have Adolphe Terris’s photograph, “Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul te Marseille in aanbouw," captured between 1855 and 1860. Editor: Well, my first thought is 'scaffolding!' It dominates everything. There's something poetic, almost vulnerable, about seeing this grand church exposed, caught mid-creation. It makes me consider the layers of effort behind such an edifice. Curator: Precisely. Terris is playing with contrasts here—the solid permanence implied by the architecture against the transient wooden framework. Think about how this albumen print freezes a fleeting moment in the construction’s history. The materials themselves speak to that tension. Editor: I do love how he captured the geometry—all those angles upon angles, lines crossing and re-crossing, it feels almost like a drawing instead of a building being put together. Curator: Note also that it evokes both chaos and order; the scaffolding, a symbol of raw process, is overlaid upon the church's nascent, structured Gothic form. Editor: In that tension is something about time too. There is such slowness implied here—the monumental project of a church’s becoming. And on the other hand, how that time will move away from where we are now. Curator: Photography really excels at doing that; capturing an interval that’s otherwise missed. Consider too the cultural climate—photography emerging as a way to document not just landscapes, but human progress. The church is not only a symbol of faith, but of civic ambition. Editor: Makes me wonder what Terris felt about what he was shooting—the artist watching construction with such delicate vision. It shows an intimacy. One usually thinks of ruins as picturesque; this image offers a completely new take on construction's hidden story. Curator: Perhaps the beauty lies in recognizing the incompleteness, the potential inherent in the unfinished form. We are seeing process laid bare. Editor: True. This offers more than just a pretty building, more like, say, a window into a world that changes, moves, grows right with the scaffolding around it. Thanks, Adolphe Terris!