1326
with José Martínez Sánchez of public works in 1866–67,
a group of photos that was chosen for the Paris Exposi-
tion of 1867, together with Clifford’s views of the Canal
de Isabel II.
Topographical photography documenting industrial
architecture gave way to some of the most interest-
ing pictures from a compositional viewpoint due to
their adoption of innovative spatial concepts and a
new iconography devoted to modern buildings and
the landscapes resulting from human interaction with
nature. This was made easier because photography had
fi nally overcome the greatest technical disadvantages
limiting outdoor images. Works by José Rodrigo, Pau
Audouard, William Atkinson and Pérez y Rodríguez
should be added to those mentioned previously. Train
images by J. Laurent, José Spreáfi co, Auguste Muriel
and Martínez Sánchez documented the birth of the many
railway lines that, together with new roads, began to
cover the peninsula. This increase in transport facilities
was spectacular and a boon to photographers because
it reduced distances and stimulated the penetration and
dissemination of new ideas.
With new advances in photomechanical printing and
the spread of the use of collodion and albumen paper,
the 1850s also brought the initiation of a Spanish pho-
tographic industry. These factors enabled the marketing
and mass production of large catalogues, albums and
the popular “Photographic Museums,” which offered
all kinds of images for sale, most of them produced by
stereoscopy. In addition to all the Spanish producers of
stereoscopic views, at this time large foreign companies,
such as the London Stereoscopic Company or Frith &
Co., also sent their photographers to capture the coun-
try’s most typical images.
In the Spanish market it was in the 1860s that the
preponderance of foreign photographers was fi nally
reversed in favour of Spaniards. This decade inaugu-
rated the era of large studios and of carte-de-visite
portraiture, which spread by means of the family album.
In Spain, as in the rest of the world, the introduction
of carte-de-visite meant a certain democratisation of
photography, since they were within reach of a much
wider public due to their being priced much lower than
daguerreotypes. This development created a domestic
market and a national photography that was able to
fulfi l the aspirations of the liberal bourgeoisie, who
after the revolution of 1868 needed a way to refl ect its
growing power and associate itself with a technology
that symbolised modernity. Consequently, large galler-
ies of celebrities, consisting of portraits of all sorts of
famous people, became the rage and were displayed
in the show-windows of studios, usually located in the
nerve centres of cities such as Madrid’s Puerta del Sol.
The most prestigious studios during this period belonged
to Pau Audouard, Moliné y Albareda, A. Espulgas and
Napoleón in Barcelona; Laurent, José Albiñana, José
Martínez Sánchez, Eusebio Juliá, Julián Martínez de
Hebert, Alonso Martínez, Edgardo and Fernando Debas,
Manuel Compañy, Christian Franzen and Bois-Guillot
in Madrid; Antonio Cosmes and Antonio García Peris
in Valencia; Xasajús, Leygonier, Lorichon, Enrique
Godínez, Julio and Emilio Beauchy, and Barthe-Boyer
in Seville; H. Otero and M. Aguirre in San Sebastián;
José García Ayola in Granada; Spreáfi co in Malaga; and
Francisco Zagala in Pontevedra. As elsewhere, many
painters and miniaturists decided to adopt the new me-
dium and became photographers, retouchers or lighting
technicians, using their artistic skills to win new clients
and improve photographic craftsmanship.
If scientists played a vital role in the initial dis-
semination of photography in Spain, photography, in
turn, was to become an indispensable tool for science
as technology continued to develop. It was applied in
myriad fi elds, from taxonomy to the analysis of ani-
mals, plants and insects, etc. By 1862, Rafael Castro
y Ordóñez, a member of the Comisión Científi ca del
Pacífi co (Scientifi c Commission of the Pacifi c), was
already making a photographic record of the Commis-
sion’s expedition to South America. In astronomy, José
Monterrey and Warren de la Rue shot a solar eclipse in
1860, and a decade later in Cadiz, John Spiller and Wil-
liam Crooks recorded the transit of Venus. Photography
entered the medical world in 1874, when some doctors in
Barcelona were authorised to photograph their patients
or use images of patients for teaching purposes. From
the mid-1860s onward, photography was also employed
as a new tool for social control to document delinquents
or condemned prisoners. One extant example of this
practice is the series of photographs of bandits that the
police commissioned from J. H. de Tejada in 1870.
The relationship between photography and the press
in Spain dates from the 1850s, when the fi rst newspapers
and illustrated magazines began to use photographic im-
ages as the basis for their engravings. From the 1860s
onwards, with the improvement of printing techniques,
they were able to include photographs directly. The
introduction of wet collodion, which enabled shorter
exposure times, was a key event in this fi eld, although
photography had to wait for the silver bromide gelatine
era to achieve real instantaneity. From 1858 noteworthy
photographers, including Clifford and Laurent, were
asked to contribute regularly to magazines like El Museo
Universal and La Crónica respectively. La Ilustración
Española y Americana, the most popular illustrated
magazine in the 1880s, enlarged its staff with a wide net-
work of regional photographer-correspondents, among
whom Juan Comba García, considered one of the found-
ers of Spanish photojournalism, stood out. Nonetheless,
the full integration of photography into the press did not
occur until the 1890s, when modern illustrated journals