19 is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary study in the long nineteenth century, based at Birkbeck, University of London. The latest issue No. 38 2025, edited by Gülru Çakmak and Patricia Smyth, '19th Century Visual Technologies in Contemporary Practice' presents scholarship on photography, stereography and immersive media. It explores the relevance of nineteenth-century visual technologies in shaping contemporary understandings of perception, memory, and cultural practice. The articles collected examine the interplay between technological innovation, spectatorship, and ideological frameworks. Through analyses of immersive exhibitions, virtual reality reconstructions, and contemporary photographic interventions, the collection investigates how historical technologies of vision continue to shape collective memory, national identity, and public engagement.
Contributors adopt a media archaeological approach, attending not only to canonical technologies but also to experimental or marginalized practices that challenge teleological narratives of progress. From immersive panoramas and stage spectacles to early photographic processes such as daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, and albumen prints, historical case studies demonstrate how visual media mediated experiences of reality, illusion, and historical memory. These nineteenth-century forms are shown to resonate in contemporary art and heritage practice, where artists and curators recontextualize, critique, and reinterpret their optical logics and ideological assumptions.
See the articles (and those from past issues here): https://19.bbk.ac.uk/articles/
Illustration: from Plaster Peaks, Photography, and the Spread of Scientific Knowledge: The Tale of Tenerife by Kris Belden-Adams
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