RT Journal Article
T1 New mobile experiences of vision
A1 Sara Dominici
YR 2019
VO 12
IS Autumn 2019
K1 camera technology
K1  cycling
K1  cycle technology
K1  instantaneous photography
K1  mobility
K1  pictorialism
K1  snapshot photography
K1  visual modernity
AB This article looks at the relationship between two very popular middle-class activities in Late Victorian Britain, photographing and cycling, and explores the influence that the new technology of physical mobility had on visual experiences and related photographic practices. It focuses, in particular, on the significance that new practices of mobility and visuality had for a growing body of amateur photographers as they negotiated these experiences as a temporality of late nineteenth century modernity. Drawing on the everyday historical experiences of cycle and photography users as these were articulated at the time, the article offers new insight into the role that such body-machine interactions had on the development of what was, effectively, a modern, moving, gaze. My argument is that the sense of control over the new ways of moving and seeing enabled by cycling contributed to shape a new visual self and that, in turn, this fuelled the desire for a new visual language and means of representation that could challenge dominant photographic practices, in a manner that foresees the emergence of snapshot photography.
NO Brennan signed the letter as ‘R. Edward Brennan, Consul C.T.C., 1510, 18 S.I.D.’ C.T.C. British and Irish Handbook & Guide for 1889 lists a ‘Brenan, R. E. from Grattan Square, Dungarvan’ (p 7) as one of its Chief Consuls. Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick (MRC/UW), MSS.328/C/4/HAN/4
NO Founded as the Bicycle Touring Club, it was re-titled Cyclists’ Touring Club in 1883 and Cycling UK in 2016. MRC/UW, MSS.328/C/3/4/1
NO The list of Irish Counties and Chief Consuls published in C.T.C. British and Irish Handbook & Guide for 1889 includes one entry for R E Brenan: ‘Waterford ……. R.E. Brenan, Grattan Square, Dungarvan’, p 57. MRC/UW, MSS.328/C/4/HAN/4
NO William Coutts Keppel (Viscount Bury) and G Lacy Hillier, who co-authored the Cycling volume of The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes, noted that same year the ‘undeniable fact that every third cyclist is a photographer’ (1887, p 55).
NO For a discussion of photographers’ use of the lantern in this period see Nead, 2004. For a broader analysis of the relation between Victorian popular visual culture, education and the lantern see Kember et al, 2012 and Dellmann and Kessler, 2020 (forthcoming).
NO The ‘suggestion’ to which Brennan referred was indeed that of ‘discovering means whereby the club membership may be kept together during the dead season’ (1885a, p 354).
NO See, for example, ‘Capitalist’, 1891; and 1892c.
NO The equivalent in today’s prices of £12, £16 and £18 is approximately £1,466, £1,955, and £2,199 respectively. Calculated using the Bank of England Inflation Calculator: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator (accessed 8 December 2018).
NO See, for example, Leake and Marret, 1884, and the example discussed later in this article.
NO The velocipede, developed in France in 1867, paved the way for today’s bicycles. It immediately appealed to wealthy amateurs and professional photographers who saw in it a more practical way to move their equipment (wet plate cameras) around. The editor of the Liverpool-based The Mechanic commented in 1869 that: ‘The velocipede seems to commend itself as a practical aid to the perambulating photographer’ (1869, p 406).
NO Figures 1 to 4 and 6 are from a photographic album of the Harrogate Meet, an annual cycling event that took place at least from 1878 to 1888 (1879b, np; 1888a p 419). Some of these photographs are also included in an album held by the collector Lorne Shields (Toronto, Canada) that, in turn, includes photographs that were printed as illustrations in an article on the Harrogate Meet (Sturmey, 1884, pp 128–136). In 1884 the CTC Monthly Gazette & Official Record, reporting on that year’s camp, commented that: ‘Photography, amateur and professional, was so pronounced that it was dangerous to open the door of one’s tent, and many pleasant souvenirs must be developing at the time of writing’ (1884e, p 288).
NO Describing this particular model, Keppel and Hillier commented that ‘the lateral bar is found most useful for many purposes. The photographer straps to it the legs of his camera, the “sticks,” to use a professional term’ (1887, p 451).
NO C.T.C. British and Irish Handbook & Guide for 1887. MRC/UW, MSS.328/C/4/HAN/3. See also: 1887a, ‘Reviews. C.T.C. handbook and guide. Compiled by Ernest R. Shipton’, AP, 24 June, pp 299–301.
NO These included, for example, the London Tricycle Club (1885b); the London Social Cycling Club (1887b); the Manchester Amateur Photographic Society (1888b); the Cycling Camera Club of Ireland (1889); the Grimsby Cyclists’ Club (1891a); the Midland Camera Club (1891b); the Holborn Camera Club (1891c); the Worcester Tricycle Club (1892a); the Essex Cycling Union (1892b); the West London Photographic Society (1893); and the South London, Leytonstone and Hackney photographic societies (Vanguard, 1897).
NO Baudelaire’s ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ was written in 1859–60 and first published in 1863.
NO The quotation is from ‘Some Motifs in Baudelaire’, completed in 1939.
NO A well-known example of the impact of cycling on late Victorian society is its influence on women’s emancipation and rights movement (Hallenbeck, 2016; McCrone, 1988). For a discussion of the relationship between cycling and gender more broadly see Norcliffe, 2016 and Wånggren, 2017.
NO The article was subsequently published in both the C.T.C. Monthly Gazette & Official Record and the AP.
NO For a discussion of the relationship between technologically enhanced mobility and modernity see Andermatt Conley, 1993; and Pooley et al, 2005. Particular attention has been paid to the impact of the railway on perceptions of space and time, and how this was expressed in literature, cinema, painting and architecture (i.e. Beaumont and Freeman, 2007; Kennedy and Treuherz, 2008; Schivelbusch, 1986). There is also a substantial literature on the relationship between modernity and visual culture that illustrates how new ways of seeing were closely tied to the increasing expansion and availability of visual technologies (i.e., Armstrong, 2008; Huhtamo, 2013; Misa et al, 2004).
NO Different responses to the role of the visual in modern life have similarly been discussed as a tension between (perceived) subjective and objective visual practices, and their capacity to be controlled or autonomous (i.e. Crary, 1990; Tagg, 1988).
NO Initially articulated by Henry Peach Robinson in The Pictorial Effect in Photography (1869), pictorialism aimed at establishing photography as a fine art. This approach heightened the expression of the beautiful as individual vision through, as the AP for example put it, strict rules of ‘selection, composition, balance, harmony’ considered to be the minimum requirement ‘to make a picture’ (1891, p 251).
NO The other invention that made instantaneous photography possible was the mechanical shutter, which allowed photographers to control the exposure time with more precision rather than stopping it manually (Coe, 1978).
PB The Science Museum Group
SN 2054-5770
LA eng
DO 10.15180/191204
UL http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/browse/issue-12/new-mobile-experiences-of-vision/
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WT Science Museum Group Journal
OL 30