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Starting from the analysis of the article ‘The Camera on Wheels’, which was published in the magazine Amateur Photographer in December 1885, Sara Dominici explores the relation between photography and cycling in late Victorian Britain. It looks, in particular, at how the confluence of new ways of moving and seeing influenced photographic practices. As contemporary accounts reveal, despite the significant difficulties of carrying fragile cameras on unstable machines, combining cycling and photography was incredibly popular: amongst the reasons was the possibility to reach a wider choice of locations, and thus subjects to photograph, and to do so in a way felt as entirely under one’s control.
The talk examines the profound influence that this had on how photographers thought of camera practices, leading to the desire for a camera apparatus that could benefit from the freedom and independence associated with their newly embraced mobility, as suggested in the title itself ‘The Camera on Wheels’.
Victoria and Albert Museum's photography collection
National Science and Media Museum
RPS Journal 1853-2012 online and searchable
Photographic History Research Centre, Leicester
Birkbeck History and Theory of Photography Research Centre
William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné
British Photography. The Hyman Collection
The Press Photo History Project Mapping the photo agencies and photographers of Fleet Street and the UK
The correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot
Historic England Archive
UAL Photography and Photography and the Archive Research Centre
Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group
www.londonstereo.com London Stereoscopic Company / T. R. Williams
www.earlyphotography.co.uk British camera makers and companies
Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock.
National Portrait Gallery, London
http://www.freewebs.com/jb3d/
Alfred Seaman and the Photographic Convention
Frederick Scott Archer
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