Amfitheater van Pompeï 1860 - 1889

Curator: Looking at this image, there's a certain stillness to it. It almost feels like a stage set, waiting for a play that will never start. Editor: Indeed. What you're sensing there is partly captured in the image. Here we have Roberto Rive's "Amfitheater van Pompeï," a gelatin silver print likely made between 1860 and 1889. Curator: Oh, fascinating! So we are looking at the very famous amphitheater of Pompeii...It's like witnessing a frozen moment in time, almost melancholy. Editor: Think about what the choice of medium offers here: photography and gelatin-silver process as technologies themselves facilitate the capturing, preservation, and replication of scenes from antiquity. The photograph isn’t merely a record. Consider the physical and chemical labour involved; from the collection of raw materials to its production—all very labor-intensive during the second half of the nineteenth century. Curator: Right, so Rive's work and his way of using photography are bound to all kinds of conditions...The composition directs your gaze. That perfectly centered, wide-angle view. It transforms the place. We stand where a long forgotten public once sat. We, now visitors of a different kind. Editor: Absolutely. The image performs an act of re-presentation – a careful framing of history, or ruins as a consumer product—in turn making the act of viewing a distinctly material transaction. Even Vesuvius looms in the background. An image full of layers, don't you think? Curator: That's true, and the very flat, neutral tones are thought provoking as well. It does make one think. Thanks to the composition you sense something monumental, the scene takes on this powerful but balanced tone—all of which reminds me, though subtly, of transience... What’s lasting, and what will soon vanish again... Editor: So well said! Seeing a common scene presented anew is thought provoking—particularly here. Rive presents us the past through the means and material possibilities available in his era. It offers food for thought indeed!