Quaritch has announced the publication of its latest book, The Photographer at Work: Documenting Civil Engineering 1853 to 1913. This catalogue of photographs highlights the intersections between civil engineering and photography from 1853 to 1915, lavishly illustrated with over four hundred photographic illustrations. Beginning with portrait photographs of the civil engineer Robert Stephenson, The Photographer at Work highlights the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge and Montreal’s Victoria Bridge before featuring photographic albums on individual civil engineering projects, with a great deal of material on French infrastructure, the Paris metro, and the Panama Canal.
The photographs take centre stage, showing not only an impressive array of canals, water supply systems, harbours, lighthouses, railway bridges, and tunnels, but also fascinating portraits of builders and engineers at work.
The photographs and albums included in this catalogue are a part of the broader Andrews Collection of Civil Engineering. The overall collection of 7500 items includes not only printed books but also bound manuscripts, drawings, and an extensive archive of construction photographs, some of which have been presented here. The collection documents the development of engineering in the broadest terms and therefore includes European, Arabian, and Asian as well as North and South American material.
Mark E. Andrews has been collecting books about applied science and civil engineering since his university days in the late 1970s. He is a member of the Grolier Club and the Association internationale de bibliophilie. In addition to writing numerous bibliophilic articles, he has published a series of catalogues documenting the books related to machines and hydraulics in his collection.
The Photographer at Work. Documenting Civil Engineering 1853 to 1913.
Mark E Andrews
Toronto, AE Publications, 2025
£85, Square folio (280 x 280 mm), pp. xvi, 431, [9]; over 400 photographic illustrations, c. 150 of which full- or double-page; coloured endpapers, printed boards, with photographic dustjacket
See: https://www.quaritch.com/books/andrews-mark-e/the-photographer-at-work-documenting-civil-engineering-1853-to-1913/U70/
