‘Cyclo-Photographers’, Visual Modernity, and the Development of Camera Technologies, 1880s–1890s
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- q3wz8
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1080/03087298.2018.1423739
- Title of journal
- History of Photography
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 46
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2150-7295
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This article explores the intertwining of cycle and camera technologies at the end of the nineteenth century by focusing on the unexplored everyday experiences of a group of British amateur photographers who called themselves ‘cyclo-photographers’. Systematic archival research enabled Dominici to conduct a close reading of contemporaneous accounts published in the cycling and photographic press. Her article discusses how cycling led to new ways of moving and seeing that influenced people’s expectations of and for photography. This was because, by virtue of a new experience of speed, cycling not only allowed people to see more things, but also to see them differently, in a way felt as entirely under one’s control. Importantly, Dominici argues that cyclo-photographers wished to represent their world long before they had adequate tools to do so. Indeed, it is their written accounts of a technologically-enhanced relation to their world, rather than their photographs, which reveals their experience of visual modernity and how this drove technological changes.
This point is important because technological change is usually explained as a progressive evolution of the medium (as linear advance from complicated to simple-to-operate camera) indebted to an economic mode of production eager to widen its consumer base. As the article demonstrates, one of the underlying reasons why late-nineteenth-century society might have felt compelled to shift towards a faster and mobile technology was linked to the emergence of a new experience of visualisation as individual expression. The article, published in the journal History of Photography, was described by the editor as part of a new wave in photographic studies that “concerns itself not with the photograph as the ultimate outcome and privileged document of enquiry, but with the lived historical experience of photography’s users.” This line of enquiry was further developed in Dominici’s other article output ‘New Mobile Experiences’.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
