Eschewing the limiting idea that nineteenth-century architecture photography merely reflects functionality, the objective of this collection is to reflect the aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural concerns of the time.

The essays hold appeal for social and cultural historians, as well as those with an interest in the fields of art history, urban geography, history of travel and tourism.

Nineteenth-century photographers captured what could be seen and what they wanted to be seen. Their images informed of exploration, progress, heritage, and destruction. Architecture was a staple subject for the first generation of photographers as it patiently tolerated the long exposures of the early processes. During its formative decades photography responded to evolutionary cultural forces of market and artistic production. Photographs of architecture reflected a specific political or social context modulated through individual points of view. For this reason, the examination of each photographic image as a primary visual document and an aesthetic object rather than a technical milestone on a chronological trajectory affords a richer multi-faceted approach to the extensive and complex corpus of photographs taken by photographers all over the world.

This project acknowledges the importance of technique in the early decades of photography but focuses on the thematic content of the material. It places the photography of architecture in an international context under the contemporary critical lens sharpened by theoretical and cultural examination of the topic.

Content - List of Figures and Tables, Notes on Contributors, Acknowledgements, Introduction, Part 1 Photography and the Discipline of Architecture History: Expanding Vision, 1 The Isolating Still Focus: Photography and Aesthetic Perception in Jacob Burckhardt's Writings, 2 "Worthy of Being Thus Preserved": American Daguerreotype Views and Preservation of the Past, 1840-1860, 3 History in Albumen, Carbon, and Photogravure: Thomas Annan's Old Glasgow, 4 Intersecting Routes of Architectural Travel, Photography, and Survey Books in the Nineteenth Century, 5 Aerial Views and Panoramas: Photographing the Nineteenth-Century Universal Expositions, 6 The Studio Collard and the Barricades of 1871: A Challenge not only to the Architecture of Paris, 7 Blurred Observations: The Late Nineteenth-Century Grand Tour of Captain J. Douglass Kennedy, 8 Construction Photography in the Service of International Public Relations: The French Connections, 9 The Elusive Challenge of Photographing Urban Spaces: Nineteenth-Century Berlin as Exemplar, PART 2 Exploring the World, 10 Francis Bedford - Architecture as Nation, 11 The Antiquarian Gaze: Colonialism, Architecture, and the Imaginative Geographies of Ruins in Nineteenth-Century Irish Photography, 12 Spanish Architecture Seen by Foreign Photographers of the Nineteenth Century, 13 Romanian Architecture and Cityscape: The Legacy of Nineteenth-Century Photographers, 14 Romanticizing the Uncanny: Ernst Ohlmer's 1873 Photographs of the European-Style Palaces in the Yuamingyuan, Select Bibliography, Index