Edfù-View through the Great Gateway into the Grand Court of the Temple of Edfù before 1866

Curator: Look at this gelatin-silver print. It's Francis Bedford's photograph from before 1866, titled "Edfu View Through the Great Gateway into the Grand Court of the Temple of Edfu". Editor: Whoa, a brutal beauty! This image hits you with stark geometry – feels like looking through a gun sight aimed right at history. But softened with so much tonal range. Is it about worship, or about framing itself? Curator: Bedford, active with the London Photographic Society, clearly intends us to appreciate the sheer massiveness of the architecture. Consider the labor required to construct it. And the layers of culture imprinted in its architecture, viewed here through the modern lens of photography. Editor: Exactly! I can’t stop thinking about that colonial-era drive to capture and possess history. Bedford is framing Edfu and almost...flattening it, turning this once vibrating temple into an object to be studied and, inevitably, consumed by Western eyes. What was there got moved around in an active way by the photographer, who by means of light shaped what could be viewed and thus owned as property in ways unseen previously. Curator: Absolutely, but isn’t there something poignant in seeing this ancient structure through the relatively new technology of photography? It's as though we are holding deep time in our hands, thinking of it through silver, gelatin and light. He emphasizes that enduring scale by contrast. Editor: Perhaps... The way the light interacts with the textured surfaces really speaks to me about the temple’s aging process. You can see how Bedford used the then still relatively novel gelatin-silver process. And of course its inherent contrast gives a tangible texture. Curator: Indeed. It's almost like feeling the desert wind and the endless cycles of sun and sand wearing away at the stone. It reminds me that art transcends time and technique, or, rather, finds transcendence within them both. Editor: Fair enough. And for me it's about how materials both constrain and liberate us in our interpretations. What a potent pairing. Curator: Indeed, it feels like an experience with shared histories rather than observed from some separate existence.