On a mild weekend in Ottawa last fall, while scores of tourists walked along the Ottawa River snapping photographs of the imposing parliamentary buildings and joining “Historic Tours” of the city, a host of curators, art historians, photographers, architects, and students assembled at the National Gallery of Canada for a symposium entitled “Photography and Architecture 1839 to the Present Day.” The symposium was held in conjunction with an exhibition at the museum—“Photography and Architecture: 1839-1939”—which was on tour from the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. The camera-toting tourists were a reminder, at least for this writer, of certain basic truths sometimes overlooked: that buildings are clues to civilization; that they show the coherence of a society and relate culture to commerce, politics, and community; and that the way we envision city structures, both past and present, is often based on the photographs we have seen: the snapshots, picture postcards, textbook illustrations, and professional renditions.
Architecture was a natural subject for photography in its early days, when exposures were long of necessity: buildings were guaranteed not to move, and it took no longer for the camera to copy a thousand stones than one. What is more, the public enjoyed architectural photographs. They appeared mainly as both large, detailed salt and albumen prints and as inexpensive stereo views. The Victorians liked their recreation educational, so the contemplation in one’s parlor of the great buildings of the world was a pastime especially suited to their tastes and times.
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