Gezicht op Québec en de Saint Charles before 1894

Curator: Isn’t it something how a photograph can distill so much of a place and time? Take "Gezicht op Québec en de Saint Charles," a view of Quebec City and the Saint Charles River captured before 1894 by Jules-Ernest Livernois, rendered as an albumen print. What strikes you first about it? Editor: Well, first off, it feels melancholic. All those hazy lines and soft focus sort of blur the edges of reality, like a half-remembered dream about a place I've never been. There’s an undeniable romance to it, yet a little haunting. Curator: Absolutely, the pictorialist style that it embodies aimed for just that, favoring aesthetic effect over sharp realism. Notice the framing—the rooftops foregrounded against the panoramic backdrop of the river and city? Editor: It's a very clever positioning indeed, inviting our eye to wander in different ways to follow a familiar visual pathway of houses to open waters, leading ultimately to other horizons. Are we invited or gently forced, I ask myself? Curator: It plays with the idea of threshold. The solid forms of the buildings ground us in the present, the everyday. The river, historically a channel for trade and exploration, opens to the possibilities of the future and evokes memories of the past. Editor: That melancholic atmosphere deepens even. There’s the promise and melancholy of movement, progress, with a nod to that sense of fleeting moments… and it brings a thought about empire, somehow. Do you get that impression too? Curator: Yes, definitely. Québec was and still is a palimpsest of many layers of history and colonization: the architecture, the strategic positioning… Livernois’ work presents that moment in a specific stage of its development, caught in the photographic emulsion for posterity. Editor: It truly makes one consider how a seemingly straightforward photograph is actually a complex encoding of place, feeling, and history. Thank you. Curator: The pleasure was all mine. Hopefully it offers new appreciation for Jules-Ernest Livernois' skill!