|
The Victorians were the greatest photograph collectors and in their lifetime occurred a revolution in communications and education. Vicotorian photography has earned a place in the hearts of many antique photograph collectors and photography historians. The uniqueness and beauty of the daguerreotype image. The ubiquity and social uses of the card photograph. The ability of the stereograph to bring distant places and times closer to home.
There are many aspects of the Net that echo nineteenth-century values and activites. Although email messages may not exhibit the quality of Victorian letters, they have in a larger sense rekindled at least a spark of the Great Age of Letters in what was an ephemreal telephonic wasteland. The early Net community also saw the self-imposed recapitulation of "the lubricant of society", ettiquite in the form of netork ettiqute or "Nettiquite." Oddly enough, this occurred in an enviorment one would think naturally hostile to "Victorian" attitdues. One of the most striking parallels to nineteenth-centur society is the Web. It embodies both the values of "parlor-travel" And the popularoity of Virtual Reality echoes the interest in stereogrpahs.
The stereograph card allowed the armchair adventuerer to visit foreign lands. The immersive quality of the three-dimensional viewin experience has the same appeal then as now. As computers become more powerful, virtual reality may become a reality of everyday life as the stereo image was for the Victorian collector. The stereographic view was touted as a great educational tool and remedy. Sets of stereocards with viewer were found in many classrooms. They were the eductaional technology fad of the day, as are computers today or television were a decade ago. The carte de visite also played a role in brigning the likenesses of well-known figures in society to ordinary people. The carte slowly introduced the concept of celebrity and image making into American life, something we are all too familer with in the 20th century. It alos helped bring families together as they spread out onto a vast contenient or marched off to war. The carte inpsired the first regular photograph albums and made them a treasured fixutre of every household. Much of the knowledge about the world we take for granted as being "natural" to the educated citizen was learned through stereogrpah and carte de visite images. The ordinary citizen or child attending school was for the first time in history intrduced to the world's great works of art, architecture and became familiar with the likenesses of authors, poets and politicians.
If you are interested nineteenth-century photography, visit my main web site, City Gallery, http://www.city-gallery.com or visit some of the Victorian Photography sites listed in the sidebar.
|
