Photographic Tourism

As well as being collected in books, souvenir photographs and views were also sold separately in portfolios like these. Here the publisher, not the purchaser, selected the views. Many of the scenes were included because of their connections to…

Early photographic negatives were made out of glass, and photographers had to immerse them in chemicals immediately after exposing them. To capture a good view, a photographer might have to carry heavy, delicate negatives, chemicals, and camera…

Professional photographers determined what scenes they would photograph, and their choices helped to determine which spots tourists visited. The views in the concertina album above suggest an itinerary for a tour that might include the Bowder Stone,…

In a famous scene in Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem The Prelude, the young Wordsworth steals a boat from the base of Stybarrow Crag. In this view, the crag is depicted with a rowing boat in the foreground: a direct allusion to Wordsworth’s…

By the end of the nineteenth century, some tourist sights had been photographed repeatedly by different firms. Stybarrow Crag was a favourite subject: it is pictured not only in this album, but in several other albums in this exhibition. Many of…

These photographs, like those in the case below, show how photography helped to make the Lake District a popular tourist destination. Wordsworth’s poetry suggested scenes to photograph, and collections of photographs shaped how readers understood his…