Nineteenth-Century Photographs and Architecture Documenting History, Charting Progress, and Exploring the World

Eschewing the limiting idea that nineteenth-century architecture photography merely reflects functionality, the objective of this collection is to reflect the aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural concerns of the time. The essays hold appeal for social and cultural historians, as well as those with an interest in the fields of art history, urban geography, history of travel and tourism. Nineteenth-century photographers captured what could be seen and what they wanted to be seen. Their images informed of exploration, progress, heritage, and destruction. Architecture was a staple subject for the first generation of photographers as it patiently tolerated the long exposures of the early processes. During its formative decades photography responded to evolutionary cultural forces of market and artistic production. Photographs of architecture reflected a specific political or social context modulated through individual points of view. For this reason, the examination of each photographic image as a primary visual document and an aesthetic object rather than a technical milestone on a chronological trajectory affords a richer multi-faceted approach to the extensive and complex corpus of photographs taken by photographers all over the world. This project acknowledges the importance of technique in the early decades of photography but focuses on the thematic content of the material. It places the photography of architecture in an international context under the contemporary critical lens sharpened by theoretical and cultural examinations of the topic.

Contents: Introduction, Micheline Nilsen; Part 1 Photography and the Discipline of Architecture History: Expanding Vision: The isolating still focus: photography and aesthetic perception in Jacob Burckhardt’s writings, Anne Hultzsch; ’Worthy of being thus preserved’: American daguerreotype views and the preservation of the past, 1840-1860, Whitney A. Martinko; History in albumen, carbon and photogravure: Thomas Annan’s Old Glasgow, Robert Evans; Intersecting routes of architectural travel, photography and survey books in the 19th century, Sibel Acar; Aerial views and panoramas: photographing the 19th-century universal expositions, John W. Stamper; The Studio Collard and the barricades of 1871: a challenge not only to the architecture of Paris, Michaela Giebelhausen; Blurred observations: the late 19th-century grand tour of Captain J. Douglass Kennedy, Eamonn Canniffe; Construction photography in the service of international public relations: the French connections, Claude Baillargeon; The elusive challenge of photographing urban spaces: 19th-century Berlin as exemplar, Douglas Klahr. Part 2 Exploring the World: Francis Bedford - architecture as nation, Stephanie Spencer; The antiquarian gaze: colonialism, architecture and the imaginative geographies of ruins in 19th-century Irish photography, Justin Carville; Spanish architecture seen by foreign photographers of the 19th century, Helena Pérez Gallardo; Romanian architecture and cityscape: the legacy of 19th-century photographers, Adrian-Silvan Ionescu; Romanticizing the uncanny: Ernst Ohlmer’s 1873 photographs of the European-style palaces in the Yuanmingyuan, Maureen Warren; Select bibliography; Index.

Micheline Nilsen is Associate Professor of Art History, Indiana University South Bend, USA.