Torghatten, een granieten berg op het eiland Torget in Noorwegen 1873 - 1890

Curator: Immediately, the stark contrast seizes the eye; there’s such raw, geological presence captured in monochrome. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: Well, if you told me it was a landscape on Mars, I’d believe you. The sheer textural drama gives me chills. And it looks as though the rock has grown, petrified into curtain-like patterns that just might start to weep… Curator: That texture certainly grabs the eye. This is a gelatin silver print dating roughly between 1873 and 1890. The photograph’s title is “Torghatten, een granieten berg op het eiland Torget in Noorwegen”—so it’s Norway and a granite mountain! Editor: Oh, Norway! So much more dramatic than I thought, knowing now that there is an island…that suggests so much context. To know the photographer, Knud Knudsen, turned his lens toward that almost aggressively barren landscape feels incredibly intentional. Curator: Knudsen often captured Norwegian landscapes in a style aligned with Romanticism but tinged with a photographic realism, as we see here. The subject, a mountain with a distinct hole through it, gains symbolic heft when considered as a portal or a gateway. Editor: A portal, yes, or a birth canal even? You look at this and ponder what’s on the other side, what it all signifies, and if passing through will bring revelation or peril. And because we’re presented with this scene, like many photographs, so very flatly—and the use of light is interesting in that case!–the feeling only intensifies the potential for wonder and the potential for deception, both held aloft. Curator: That stark interplay between light and shadow does guide our eyes toward what seems like an unknowable future beyond the granite opening. Perhaps this image invites us to examine our own sense of geological and psychological boundaries and frontiers. Editor: Absolutely. A place like this could transform even the most cynical visitor. Makes you want to hop on the first flight to Norway! Curator: It certainly inspires reflection, and Knudsen has deftly captured an aspect of nature's sublimity that stays with you. Editor: A picture, truly, that vibrates! A conversation starter, indeed.