Gezicht op Spa 1866 - 1870

Curator: This daguerreotype, "Gezicht op Spa" by Jules Hippolyte Quévat, captured between 1866 and 1870, presents us with a captivating bird's-eye view. What strikes you about it? Editor: Well, it’s striking to see such a high vantage point captured so early in the history of photography. The rooftops huddled together give it a sense of community, but it's also quite a detached, almost clinical view of this town. How do you interpret this work? Curator: Consider the socio-political context. The mid-19th century was a time of rapid industrialization and urbanization. How does this romanticized view of Spa, a famous resort town, play into the anxieties of that period? What needs are being fulfilled by representing places like this, as distinct from the new, crowded, industrial cities? Editor: It almost feels like an escape, a constructed paradise for the elite, separated from the realities of industrial labor and urban squalor. It’s a promotional image, almost like early tourism marketing. Curator: Exactly. The composition invites us to imagine the lives within those buildings, who had access to the leisure offered there, and whose labor made that leisure possible? And even more fundamentally: who got to *see* these images? It couldn’t have been widely available to the working class, could it? Editor: No, I imagine it was more accessible to the bourgeois and aristocratic classes of the time. Curator: These images solidify class divisions even as they may seem like "innocent" landscapes. Editor: So, beyond the aesthetic appeal, the photo also embodies a complex commentary on social class and economic power during the industrial revolution? It reveals that what appears beautiful on the surface might mask deeper inequalities. Curator: Precisely. It is crucial to reflect on the multiple perspectives embedded within seemingly simple landscape photography. It forces us to think about issues of access and representation. Editor: This has changed how I’ll look at similar images moving forward! I am definitely looking to explore this topic more!