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of glass plate negative/albumin print could provide an
almost tactile registration of the materiality of physical
space—the grit of masonry and sand, the smoothness
of plastered walls, or subtle texture of wood.
As the industry of leisure travel grew, a develop-
ment which can be dated to the fi rst package tours to
the Crystal Palace exposition in 1851, photography
and the activity of travel became ever more intimately
entwined. Travel views at once satisfi ed a demand for
views of the world to those who would never visit the
places shown, as they encouraged the consumption of
places which were becoming more broadly accessible
through organized tourism. Thomas Cook was one of
the earliest, but by no means the only operator, offering
package tours; Cook’s Tours brought a growing number
of middle class travelers to the Universal Exposition in
Paris in 1855, to holiday destinations in Great Britain
and Continental Europe by 1860, and to Egypt and the
Holy Land in 1869. Expanded access to leisure travel
altered the point of purchase of travel photographs but
not the standards for the way in which place was in-
scribed as view. Travelers could purchase photographs
of the sites they visited along their route. Commonly
loose prints were purchased and arranged in elaborate
photographic albums which served as the recapitulation
of the journey, although local photographers did offer
commercially printed albums dedicated to the particular
area. While these albums operated as souvenir and proof
of status for a traveler, they also retained the earlier
connections between travel, photographic record, and
nineteenth-century knowledge making. A number of
photographic Tour de Monde albums were placed in
public reading rooms or libraries, as a source of instruc-
tion for those who could not travel (Mickelwright, 2003.
Local photographic studios were common at major
sites after the late 1850s and nineteenth-century travel
guides listed the best local sources for photographs.
Commercial photographers offered photographs spe-
cifi cally for the visitor wishing to preserve the sights
he or she encountered in the course of travel, includ-
ing a variety of staged photographs of local life which
had more apparent than real connection to his or her
experience as tourist. Native “types” photographed in
cafes, dimly lit courtyards, or “domestic” surroundings
offered the illusion of connection with the foreign other
that was seldom provided by the protected experience
of the package tour arranged and managed to cause the
least discomfort to western travelers. Maison Bonfi ls
and Abdullah Freres in the Middle East, Bourne and
Shepherd, and John Burke in India; Georgio Som-
mer, Fratelli Alinari, Tommaso Cuccionni, and Robert
Macpherson in Italy; Muybridge, Watkins, and Jackson
in the American West; Jakob Laurent and Charles Clif-
ford in Spain; Felice Beato and his successors in the
Far East; Baldus in France; and George Washington
Wilson, Francis Frith, and Roger Fenton in the United
Kingdom, to name just a few—were photographers with
large commercial offerings of travel views available
both on-site and through publication and distribution
networks in European and American cities. Views of
the Alps by the Bisson brothers (1860) and Charles
Soulier (1869) recorded mountaineering, another form
of leisure activity that developed as tourism expanded.
Rail journeys were recapitulated by photographers in
France (Baldus) and the United States (Rau and Jack-
son), as rail travel accelerated access to distant places.
Increasingly railroad companies, who understood that
leisure travel passengers offered a signifi cant potential
market, enticed those travelers by photographs which
celebrated the engineering accomplishment embodied
by the railroad and offered the inducement of miles of
unfamiliar landscape to delight a passenger’s eye. In the
United States, the Santa Fe Railroad Company com-
missioned both painters and photographers to provide
images calculated to whet the public appetite for the
visual attractions of the American Southwest. Commer-
cial photographers—initially subsidized by the railroad
company—set up shop at rail stations and tourist desti-
nation hotels, also subsidized by the railroads.
Stereo photography was particularly well suited to
travel images, offering as it did an immersive experience
of place through the combination of the three-dimen-
sionality of the image and the restricted fi eld enforced
by the viewer (Schwartz 1996). The effect of “know-
ing” the place seen through the stereoscopic viewer
was reinforced by the inclusion of didactic text on the
reverse of the card. A number of major publishers of
stereo images—Underwood and Underwood, Kilburn
Brothers, Frith and Co.—dispatched photographers to
locations, events, and the aftermath of disasters around
the world to feed the extensive market for entertainment
and instruction. Realistic Travels Publishers offered
stereo views of the far reaches of the British Empire
from offi ces in London, Delhi, and Cape Town; views
that reinforced imperial possession while providing
instruction to future colonial offi cers. Stereo series of
foreign and exotic locales continued to be widely mar-
keted through the 1930s. Touted as an entertaining form
of armchair travel and an educational tool, they could
be found in parlor as well as classroom.
Perhaps the last manifestation of commercial photo-
graphic practice associated with travel in the nineteenth
century was the development and rapid proliferation of
the picture postcard industry at the end of the nineteenth
century. By the 1890s, travel views sized to meet new
postal codes and reproduced in collotype (also known
under a number of proprietary names such as Phototype,
Heliotype, Albertype, and Lichtdruck) or photolithog-
raphy became a standard accompaniment to travel. By
1888, the halftone process and later a chromo-halftone