818
professional studio cameras and multiple lens cameras
was also made. Lancaster produced a range of associated
accessories and darkroom equipment.
In common with its major rival, Thornton-Pickard,
Lancaster failed to respond to the changing demand
for smaller plate cameras and simpler amateur roll fi lm
cameras. After the First World War the fi rm declined
rapidly with few new cameras being produced; one of
it’s more successful products was an enlarger. It gradu-
ally declined and ceased around 1955.
Michael Pritchard
LANDSCAPE
The evolution of every photographic genre is highly
determined by a wide range of technical developments.
Some technical factors, however, were particularly
relevant for the visualization of landscapes, which are
characterized by infi nity, capriciousness, changeability,
an endless amount of tiny details, and ever-changing
light conditions. As a result, more than in any other
genre, the landscape photographer is obliged to select
some of the available options provided by the technical
apparatus. Sharpness, for instance, can determine the
mood of an image. Whereas a sharp defi nition enables
the landscape photographer to bring forward little de-
tails and texture, the use of a wider aperture can push
the unfocused zones to the back, rendering a soft and
mysterious atmosphere to it. Confronted with subjects
in motion, such as waterfalls or sweeping foliage, the
photographer has to use a speed short enough to halt
the movement, or, by contrast, he can use a certain blur
because it suggests movement. A longer exposure time
can do justice to the complexity and variety of the image
but, simultaneously, it can render the ripples on a water
surface invisible. Adjusting the exposure to the terrain
implies an overexposure of the sky—this resulted in the
typical uniform white skies of many nineteenth-century
landscape photographs. The limited sensitivity of the
collodion emulsion (especially for greens) and the in-
tense luminosity of the sky made the recording of clouds
almost impossible if the exposure was correct for the
tonal values of the landscape. Panchromatic fi lms and
yellow and red fi lters circumvented these diffi culties,
but wet-plate photographers often avoided glaring white
skies by the combination of cloud details from another
negative during contact printing in the studio.
Nineteenth-century landscape photography was also
in another way highly dependent on technical limita-
tions. Since landscapes have to be photographed on
the spot, the photographer had to deal with the relative
mobility of his equipment. This included fi rst and fore-
most the huge size and bulk of the fi eld camera itself
since negative size determined fi nished print size before
enlarging became easier and more practical in the 1890s.
Furthermore, the tools of a landscape photographer also
comprised a tripod, a darkroom, developing gear and
attachments, silver-coated metal plates or collodion
plates, and a box of chemicals. Certainly after the wet-
plate process appeared in the 1850s and prior to the
introduction of the silver gelatin dry plate in 1871, the
landscape photographer had to carry with him a whole
laboratory; specially because collodion plates had to
be exposed while still wet—and therefore prepared in
situ—and developed immediately after the exposure
had been made.
Landscape photography, of course, was also highly
dependent on the availability and accessibility of its sub-
ject. In light of this, the genre is not only a component of
the modern invention of photography but also a product
of modern urban culture and its attitude vis-à-vis natural
surroundings. The nineteenth century, after all, was an
age characterized by the opening up of all kinds of ter-
ritories. Within the context of the colonial enterprise,
travelers and explorers discovered and charted other
continents. Photography unmistakably contributed to
both the physical and cultural appropriation of exotic
territories and the continuous exploration and settle-
ments of new lands. In its own way, photography was a
form of mapping and it allowed the land to be control-
led, visually at least. It contributed to the practical and
symbolical management of the vast colonial territories
which demanded the classifying, recording, census-
taking, and mapping of everything in order to render
it knowable, imaginable and controllable by means of
European systems and on European terms.
At home, the European landscape came within reach
through the railways and, at the end of the century, the
bicycle. The photography of landscapes and scenery
was encouraged by tourism, a modern phenomenon
inherently linked with the massive production, distribu-
tion, and consumption of (mechanical) images. In the
industrializing nations, railroads made formerly isolated
regions accessible to new classes of travel consum-
ers. These included middle-class families on a limited
budget and schedule, who purchased photographic views
as souvenirs. Later, when do-it-yourself mass consumer
photography developed shortly before the turn of the
century, they took their own pictures.
Furthermore, the genre of landscape photography
was not only the product of new kinds of image produc-
tion and new ways of approaching the lands but also of
specifi c ways of looking at natural surroundings and
the countryside. After all, throughout the nineteenth
century, landscape and nature were not only important
motifs in photography, they were pre-eminent themes
and motifs in painting and literature as well. What’s
more, landscape photography was unmistakably infl u-
enced by literary and pictorial conventions. Landscape
photographs confi rm that the very notion of landscape