Photography, catastrophe, and the curious preservation of time.
Deep Life Reflections: Essay 190 | November 6, 2026 | James Gibb
Destruction can sometimes also be an act of preservation.
In 1859, a Russian photographer, Gabriel Ivanovic de Rumine, took a series of 32 large-format photographs at Pompeii. By this time, Pompeii had been undergoing excavation for more than a century, with 1748 being seen as the beginning of the modern discovery of Pompeii under Charles III of Bourbon. De Rumine was born in St. Petersburg to an educated aristocratic family. He was a contemporary and friend of Leo Tolstoy. He was also an official of the Russian Imperial Army when, in 1856—back from the Crimean War—he decided to dedicate himself to his new passion. Photography.
Photography was still a relatively new art form at this point in the nineteenth century, invented only a couple of decades before. De Rumine wanted to use the medium to help advance the art and practice of photography in Russia, which was some way behind the grand European capital cities. He opened a studio in Paris and joined two major photography societies of the time. In 1858, de Rumine put himself forward to join the Grand Duke Konstantin of Russia—brother of Tsar Alexander II and admiral of the Russian navy—on a long cruise of the Mediterranean that was to take in, among others, Palermo, Athens, Jerusalem, and Naples. And it was at this last stop, in 1859, that de Rumine shot his photographs of Pompeii.
His set of images represents one of the earliest photographic recordings of Pompeii, and especially on such a large scale. These photos are currently on display in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (the Archaeological Museum of Naples). Earlier this year, I spent a morning there and saw 14 of the photographs as part of an exhibition. What’s striking about these photos is the eerie feeling that what we are looking at then remains very much the same as now, despite more than a century and a half having passed. Human history is a story of progress. Towns and cities are transformed by technological innovation, economic prosperity, and advances in every field. Before and after photos of places 150 years apart are stark. Yet, Pompeii remains encased in its own time, hidden behind its own protective display glass.
There is, of course, a peculiar irony here. Photography allows us to preserve moments in time like no other medium. But Pompeii had already been preserved for nearly eighteen centuries before de Rumine arrived with his camera and all his equipment. And this preservation was not by design. It was by catastrophe. The unprecedented record of Roman life that survives today at Pompeii exists because of the very forces that led to its destruction. And the warning signs of those forces had been gathering long before the eruption.
More than 160 years after de Rumine arrived in Pompeii with his camera, I went there with mine. On a warm spring day in May of this year, I walked the site of Pompeii and trekked to the top of Vesuvius. The photographs below are from that day.
On the morning of August 24, AD79—the traditionally accepted date of the eruption—life began like any other summer day in Pompeii. While there had been warning signs—water in the area had begun to fail and small tremors regularly shook the region—residents paid little attention. The Romans simply didn’t understand what these signs meant. They didn’t know Mount Vesuvius was a volcano. The word volcano didn’t even exist. They treated these incidents as the work of the gods.
At around 1pm the gods went to work. A thunderous explosion ripped into the sky, launching a column of ash, pumice, and superheated gas miles into the atmosphere, immediately darkening the blue afternoon sky. The town was initially subjected to hours of falling pumice and ash, which caused roofs to collapse and made escape increasingly difficult. Some fled, but others willingly stayed—and it cost them their lives. Devastating pyroclastic currents—fast-moving mixtures of hot gas, ash and volcanic material—later swept through the town, enveloping it in time. Out of an estimated population of 10,000 to 20,000 people, some 2,000 are thought to have died.
When the French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau visited Naples and Pompeii in 1917, travelling with Pablo Picasso, he wrote to his mother on March 13 that “Le Vésuve fabrique tous les nuages du monde”—“Vesuvius makes all the clouds in the world.” Two millennia since the catastrophic eruption of AD79, modern-day Naples continues to hold an uneasy truce with Vesuvius, living with its ever-present threat of volcanic and seismic activity. As I stared into the giant crater of the volcano, filled with rock, vegetation, and foreboding, I saw several bursts of sulphur-rich steam and volcanic gases escaping from vents pockmarked around the rim. It still feels like Vesuvius is the mass-producer of the world’s clouds.
Vesuvius remains an active volcano. It last erupted in 1944. Volcanologists expect it to erupt again. Pompeii continues to lie at its feet, preserved by the very force that destroyed it, its archaeological remains extraordinary artefacts of a Roman town telling fragments of stories from a long-gone empire. Naples has now joined it, living beneath the same threat.
Below the clouds. Waiting. And watching.
This essay draws on a longer visual essay from my Deep Life Photography collection, which include the complete photographic series and further historical context.
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