Paris, INHA and BnF
Only a little time after the official announcement of photography’s invention in 1839, a variety of different panoramic cameras, formats and techniques were developed to provide extended views of landscapes, cityscapes, and monuments. While most accounts mention either Joseph Puchberger or Friedrich von Mertens as inventors of the first panoramic camera, and thus situate the invention of panoramic photography in the early years of the 1840s, there is little known about precisely when, how, and under which conditions the panoramic view entered photography. Most of the sparse studies in the field of panoramic photography are focused on the development of optical devices, formats, or techniques. In this perspective, the history of panoramic photography is a history of rotating cameras, swing-lenses, curved plates, montage, and printing methods.
One aim of this conference is to give a historical overview of panoramic photography from its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century until most recent developments in photography including digital imagery and VR environments. This history is neither linear nor homogeneous. Already the commonly used composite terms “panoramic photography,” “panorama photography,” and “photographic panorama” evoke the genuine ambivalence and heterogeneity of the phenomenon. Panoramic photography is, in fact, part of both the history of the circular panorama, invented by Robert Barker towards the end of the 18th century as a popular mass medium, and the history of photography, presented to the public some fifty years later as the ultimate means of reproducing and multiplying the real. Due to its apparent qualities of providing authentic true-to-life documents, photography has, from the start, played a decisive role as preparatory sketches for painted panoramas. Vice versa has the circular panorama not only inspired the idea to create horizontal photographs covering elongated fields of view of 140 to 360 degrees; it is also at the origin of a whole series of photographic immersive environments and devices, ranging from the Lumière brothers Photorama of 1900 to recent developments of digital technologies such as Google Street View and Photosynth.
