Portret van boekhandelaar David Blok met een andere man 1888 - 1904

Curator: Look at this photograph. It's titled "Portret van boekhandelaar David Blok met een andere man," which translates to "Portrait of bookseller David Blok with another man," and was taken sometime between 1888 and 1904. A gelatin-silver print. The mystery of who took it! It has such an appealing candid quality, like a caught moment. Editor: What strikes me most is the formality battling with the everyday. Two men, presumably Blok and an associate, captured against a building exterior with what appears to be newspaper lettering etched into the stonework. Both clutch books as props but they feel so stiff! Curator: They do have a wonderful serious air, don't they? The slightly tilted heads, the one holding his book so purposefully. What I find incredibly moving about portraits like this is that we're now viewing a world which feels almost like a dream. I like that ghostly quality inherent in old photography, Editor: Exactly! Ghostly is the perfect word. The newspaper lettering on the wall behind them almost feels like a time stamp and the men are standing against it frozen forever in time, their identity and purpose slowly evaporating like the silver from this gelatin print. They serve as symbols of that bygone era. Their books? Totems of knowledge and a shared history. Curator: I like how the light just softens everything. Their features are so delicate, captured by light but still with a real solidity. You want to know about them, who were these two men and what did they spend their days doing? Did they discuss literature, drink together or were they as severe as they appear? Editor: And perhaps, unconsciously, the artist has highlighted the ephemeral nature of our endeavors. That these once prominent figures, now mostly forgotten, still persist in image. Their pose mimics paintings of wealthy merchants holding open Bibles and prayer books. The cultural need to place ourselves into context for later analysis. Curator: Perhaps they wouldn't want all this attention on them after all. But here we are, all this time later, pondering their image, a conversation sparked by them. Photography is so incredibly interesting, a ghost made solid, if only for a moment. Editor: An enduring image, pregnant with symbols. Perhaps someday, future eyes will gaze upon our own images, struggling to decode the relics and meanings we left behind.