Exquisite Reality: Photography and the Invention of Nationhood, 1851–1900

One of the oldest examples of an architectural photograph, William Henry Fox Talbot’s A Scene in York depicts York Minster cathedral scarcely visible in the background of a streetscape. Taken in the early 1840s, this image was one of the twenty-four that Fox Talbot included in his The Pencil of Nature, the first commercially published book of photographs. Alongside images of china cabinets, manuscripts, and his own family, Fox Talbot included a notice to readers: “The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil.”

But while Fox Talbot’s pictures reproduced a scene without the aid of the artist’s hand, what scenes he chose to render and how he chose to render them were entirely the artist’s decisions. His framing here carefully shows the street’s details, while the cathedral behind dissolves into light. The photograph contrasts the modern city with a Gothic cathedral: one sharp and clear, the other hazy and mysterious.

Fox Talbot’s exactly rendered photograph echoes David Cox Jr.’s impressionistic watercolor of a cathedral, made roughly contemporaneously. Both depict a church through a Romantic gaze, framing Gothic architecture as sublime, mystical, historical. Fox Talbot’s early architectural image presaged decades of similar images: photographs promoted as exact reproductions that actually depicted the many choices and influences of the photographer.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

One of the oldest examples of an architectural photograph, William Henry Fox Talbot’s A Scene in York depicts York Minster cathedral scarcely visible in the background of a streetscape. Taken in the early 1840s, this image was one of the twenty-four that Fox Talbot included in his The Pencil of Nature, the first commercially published book of photographs. Alongside images of china cabinets, manuscripts, and his own family, Fox Talbot included a notice to readers: “The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil.”

But while Fox Talbot’s pictures reproduced a scene without the aid of the artist’s hand, what scenes he chose to render and how he chose to render them were entirely the artist’s decisions. His framing here carefully shows the street’s details, while the cathedral behind dissolves into light. The photograph contrasts the modern city with a Gothic cathedral: one sharp and clear, the other hazy and mysterious.

Fox Talbot’s exactly rendered photograph echoes David Cox Jr.’s impressionistic watercolor of a cathedral, made roughly contemporaneously. Both depict a church through a Romantic gaze, framing Gothic architecture as sublime, mystical, historical. Fox Talbot’s early architectural image presaged decades of similar images: photographs promoted as exact reproductions that actually depicted the many choices and influences of the photographer.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

In the mid-nineteenth century, many in France saw Gothic architecture as nothing more than the relics of a feudal and oppressive past. Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, however, drastically changed how the French perceived architectural heritage. Such buildings, Hugo claimed, represented the collective work of generations, a living testament to France’s history.

Following the immense success of his novel, which tells the story of the noble bell ringer of Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral, Hugo called for the establishment of a law to protect medieval architecture in France. Though many buildings survived, decades of revolution, secularization, and bureaucratization, he argued, had stripped them of their once-noble roles in society: “Our poor churches can now but attempt to save themselves by taking up absurd disguises. Not a single Notre-Dame in France, no matter how colossal, how venerable, how magnificent, how impartial, how historical, how magisterial, does not today have a little tricouleur flag dangling from her ear. Often one can save an admirable church by writing above its entrance: ‘Town Hall.’”

Twenty years later, the National Commission on Historical Monuments, established on Hugo’s urging, sent photographers like Charles Soulier around the nation to catalogue examples of ancient and medieval architecture. Their efforts not only captured scenes of immense beauty and splendor, as in Soulier’s majestic Notre-Dame, but exposed the odd recycling of medieval architecture that Hugo had half-jokingly described. In the 1890s, the Bisson brothers’ studio took this picture of a former religious building converted into a military one. Niches that likely once held sculpted saints are empty, and a sign above the door reads: “Infantry Barracks.”

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

In the mid-nineteenth century, many in France saw Gothic architecture as nothing more than the relics of a feudal and oppressive past. Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, however, drastically changed how the French perceived architectural heritage. Such buildings, Hugo claimed, represented the collective work of generations, a living testament to France’s history.

Following the immense success of his novel, which tells the story of the noble bell ringer of Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral, Hugo called for the establishment of a law to protect medieval architecture in France. Though many buildings survived, decades of revolution, secularization, and bureaucratization, he argued, had stripped them of their once-noble roles in society: “Our poor churches can now but attempt to save themselves by taking up absurd disguises. Not a single Notre-Dame in France, no matter how colossal, how venerable, how magnificent, how impartial, how historical, how magisterial, does not today have a little tricouleur flag dangling from her ear. Often one can save an admirable church by writing above its entrance: ‘Town Hall.’”

Twenty years later, the National Commission on Historical Monuments, established on Hugo’s urging, sent photographers like Charles Soulier around the nation to catalogue examples of ancient and medieval architecture. Their efforts not only captured scenes of immense beauty and splendor, as in Soulier’s majestic Notre-Dame, but exposed the odd recycling of medieval architecture that Hugo had half-jokingly described. In the 1890s, the Bisson brothers’ studio took this picture of a former religious building converted into a military one. Niches that likely once held sculpted saints are empty, and a sign above the door reads: “Infantry Barracks.”

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Photography was critical in defining Italy’s identity as a nation. Italy did not assume its modern boundaries until the 1860s, when what had been warring duchies, kingdoms, and states were unified for the first time under King Vittorio Emanuele II. Keen to define an Italian national identity, the king commissioned photographers, including the Alinari brothers of Florence, to travel the peninsula documenting the art and architecture of the nation. Such images served twin purposes: at home, they illustrated what had once been foreign lands to the citizens of unified Italy, and distributed abroad, they advertised the history of the nation to would-be tourists.

Travel to Italy had long been popular among Europe’s upper classes, and artists from across the continent came to sketch, paint, and sculpt in the land of Leonardo and Raphael. By commissioning Italian photographers like the Alinari brothers and Giacomo Brogi, the king sought to control the image of the nation both abroad and at home. Their royal credentials granted his photographers access to otherwise-unreachable vistas like these: the roof of the Duomo of Milan, and the portico of the Uffizi gallery gazing toward Florence’s Piazza della Signoria. The images were popular not only with tourists but also among academics, particularly art historians, who favored Alinari brothers photographs in particular to illustrate books and lectures. Today the Alinari studio remains one of the largest sources of images of Italian art and architecture.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Photography was critical in defining Italy’s identity as a nation. Italy did not assume its modern boundaries until the 1860s, when what had been warring duchies, kingdoms, and states were unified for the first time under King Vittorio Emanuele II. Keen to define an Italian national identity, the king commissioned photographers, including the Alinari brothers of Florence, to travel the peninsula documenting the art and architecture of the nation. Such images served twin purposes: at home, they illustrated what had once been foreign lands to the citizens of unified Italy, and distributed abroad, they advertised the history of the nation to would-be tourists.

Travel to Italy had long been popular among Europe’s upper classes, and artists from across the continent came to sketch, paint, and sculpt in the land of Leonardo and Raphael. By commissioning Italian photographers like the Alinari brothers and Giacomo Brogi, the king sought to control the image of the nation both abroad and at home. Their royal credentials granted his photographers access to otherwise-unreachable vistas like these: the roof of the Duomo of Milan, and the portico of the Uffizi gallery gazing toward Florence’s Piazza della Signoria. The images were popular not only with tourists but also among academics, particularly art historians, who favored Alinari brothers photographs in particular to illustrate books and lectures. Today the Alinari studio remains one of the largest sources of images of Italian art and architecture.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Like the Ottoman sultans, the king of Italy sought to document the growth of his new nation. In addition to recording monuments, artworks, and other historical objects of national pride, photographers were commissioned to document new civic projects, construction, and engineering feats. These two images by the German-born photographer Giorgio Sommer capture public works in the north of Italy. On the left is the Gotthardbahn, the train line that opened in 1882 and traversed the mountainous border between Switzerland and Italy. On the right are façades of the Via Po in Turin, a historical street widened in the late nineteenth century to add a tram line that served as the city’s earliest public transportation.

Photography, a medium with roots in chemistry and the sciences, provided artists like Sommer not only a means to document these feats, but an appropriate form with which to do so: the modern medium was eminently appropriate for modern subjects. Based for much of his career in Naples, Sommer’s work ranged from documenting the engineering projects funded by the king of Italy to producing detailed records of the excavations at Pompeii, where he served as an official photographer.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Like the Ottoman sultans, the king of Italy sought to document the growth of his new nation. In addition to recording monuments, artworks, and other historical objects of national pride, photographers were commissioned to document new civic projects, construction, and engineering feats. These two images by the German-born photographer Giorgio Sommer capture public works in the north of Italy. On the left is the Gotthardbahn, the train line that opened in 1882 and traversed the mountainous border between Switzerland and Italy. On the right are façades of the Via Po in Turin, a historical street widened in the late nineteenth century to add a tram line that served as the city’s earliest public transportation.

Photography, a medium with roots in chemistry and the sciences, provided artists like Sommer not only a means to document these feats, but an appropriate form with which to do so: the modern medium was eminently appropriate for modern subjects. Based for much of his career in Naples, Sommer’s work ranged from documenting the engineering projects funded by the king of Italy to producing detailed records of the excavations at Pompeii, where he served as an official photographer.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

On the first image the French photographer Félix Bonfils captured a scene of the cemetery in Cairo known as al-Qarafa (القرافة), The City of the Dead. By placing camels and Bedouins in the foreground and capturing the scene from a distance, his photograph would have you believe the domes and minarets of the al-Qarafa are part of the regular lives of these figures. In reality the cemetary belonged to the fourteenth-century Abbasid Caliphate, an empire that had not ruled in Cairo for hundreds of years. Likely sold to French tourists, the image appealed the colonialist European imagination of Egypt and the Middle East as an uncivilized land of fairy-tales and medieval legends. Bonfils's photograph carefully depicts a scene that suited the taste and, importantly, the assumptions of its audiences.

The second image, by contrast, is a depiction of the same scene by the Ottoman photographer Pascal Sébah. A citizen of the empire that controlled Cairo for much of the nineteenth century, Sébah depicted Cairo as a distinctly modernizing city. In his image the camels and Bedouins are gone and in their place are pylons and the foundations of new construction next to the City of the Dead. Both depictions are overtly poltical: Sébah's casts Cairo as the Ottoman government wanted it to be seen and Bonfils's renders Cairo as the French imagined it to be.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

On the first image the French photographer Félix Bonfils captured a scene of the cemetery in Cairo known as al-Qarafa (القرافة), The City of the Dead. By placing camels and Bedouins in the foreground and capturing the scene from a distance, his photograph would have you believe the domes and minarets of the al-Qarafa are part of the regular lives of these figures. In reality the cemetary belonged to the fourteenth-century Abbasid Caliphate, an empire that had not ruled in Cairo for hundreds of years. Likely sold to French tourists, the image appealed the colonialist European imagination of Egypt and the Middle East as an uncivilized land of fairy-tales and medieval legends. Bonfils's photograph carefully depicts a scene that suited the taste and, importantly, the assumptions of its audiences.

The second image, by contrast, is a depiction of the same scene by the Ottoman photographer Pascal Sébah. A citizen of the empire that controlled Cairo for much of the nineteenth century, Sébah depicted Cairo as a distinctly modernizing city. In his image the camels and Bedouins are gone and in their place are pylons and the foundations of new construction next to the City of the Dead. Both depictions are overtly poltical: Sébah's casts Cairo as the Ottoman government wanted it to be seen and Bonfils's renders Cairo as the French imagined it to be.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

For nineteenth-century photographers, central to the beauty of a ruin was the sense of loss that it engendered in a viewer. Crumbling walls and overgrown stones — especially in the case of religious structures — imbued buildings with qualities of loss and sacrifice. Such themes are explicit in this image by the English photographer Francis Frith of three surviving columns from a Christian church in Ethiopia. Frith frames one column centrally with the others flanking it, a composition that recalls images of the Crucifixion, like this engraving by the Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius. The columns that once supported the structure of the church become stand-ins for the Cross, the ultimate sign of loss and sacrifice in Christianity. Frith made many trips to Jerusalem and the Middle East, the vast area known as the Holy Land for its biblical associations. He eventually established a wildly successful company, Francis Frith & Co., that sold postcards illustrated with scenes from his travels.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

For nineteenth-century photographers, central to the beauty of a ruin was the sense of loss that it engendered in a viewer. Crumbling walls and overgrown stones — especially in the case of religious structures — imbued buildings with qualities of loss and sacrifice. Such themes are explicit in this image by the English photographer Francis Frith of three surviving columns from a Christian church in Ethiopia. Frith frames one column centrally with the others flanking it, a composition that recalls images of the Crucifixion, like this engraving by the Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius. The columns that once supported the structure of the church become stand-ins for the Cross, the ultimate sign of loss and sacrifice in Christianity. Frith made many trips to Jerusalem and the Middle East, the vast area known as the Holy Land for its biblical associations. He eventually established a wildly successful company, Francis Frith & Co., that sold postcards illustrated with scenes from his travels.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.

Although the cost of printing and publishing high-quality images remained high throughout the nineteenth century, it was still far more affordable than travel. Photography afforded many the ability to see otherwise-unreachable sights and landscapes. Portfolios and bound volumes of photographs allowed for armchair voyages: trips around the world from the comfort of one’s own home. Works like this panorama, here combined digitally for the first time to reconstruct the scene as the photographer would have seen it, offered views tinged with nationalism and pride. Originally printed as ten separate images and published in a bound portfolio, it depicts the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a minute peninsula on Spain’s southern coast. For audiences in Leeds or Liverpool, this panorama offered both a vision of the tropical Mediterranean and a glimpse of their nation’s imperial holdings.

Click thumbnails below to switch between images.