Compositie van gipsen ornamenten uit het atelier van J. Delbove, Brussel, België 1860 - 1882

Curator: So, what do you see? What's your immediate impression looking at this? Editor: Stark. And a little sad. The light is so flat, making these plaster casts appear almost ghostly. It's a collection of echoes, somehow. Curator: "Compositie van gipsen ornamenten uit het atelier van J. Delbove, Brussel, België." It’s an albumen print from between 1860 and 1882. A photograph OF plaster reliefs. We're seeing representations of representations. Editor: Ah, a double remove! It feels appropriate, that sense of distance. Tell me more about these plaster ornaments. What stories do they tell? Curator: From what I can see, they seem to be religious subjects mainly. Maybe intended for churches or private devotion? Plaster casts were a very popular way to reproduce sculptures and ornament. A sort of democratization of art for a rising middle class. Editor: I think it’s interesting how photography captures plaster—both mediums associated with mimicry and reproduction. Think about the colonial implications, too. Reproducing and exporting European aesthetics… plaster saints for every parlor, influencing taste, defining "beauty"… Curator: Definitely food for thought there! I keep circling back to that melancholy. I imagine artisans toiling, turning out these copies, each one a slight variation. There’s a beauty there, but a lost connection too, do you feel it? Editor: Precisely. They’re frozen in this photographic moment, devoid of warmth and the original creator’s breath. Yet, isn't it interesting how the photographic process, in capturing these mass-produced objects, inadvertently reveals something unique about them? A patina of age, maybe? Or simply the accidental poetry of composition? Curator: So, what started as sad for you has changed. What are you left with? Editor: A kind of haunted beauty. A recognition that even in reproduction, there is evidence of human engagement, of history seeping into the very material of these objects. Curator: I like that... haunted beauty. Something to take away and consider!