Research branch · camera first
Photographic Breadcrumbs
Surviving photographs. Not proof of a theory. Look at the picture, read what the archive says it is, and compare it with the maps.
The path is a baseline, then documented changes of terrain and street grade, then catastrophic destruction. Reconstruction is not in this first collection. The archival files are not cropped or redrawn.
Some chairs also carry Modern Eyes: a labeled visualization made from that photograph, so the scene is easier to look at. It stays on the same chair. It is not another source, and it is not a separate gallery. The original remains the evidence.
Camera first
World’s Fairs
Official plates and archive links. Not a verdict.
- 01
24 September 1848
Cincinnati waterfront
Cincinnati, Ohio
Modern Eyes attached
About two miles of the riverfront: steamboats, the landing, the young city, and the hills behind it.
- 02
1859
Broadway on a rainy day
New York City
Modern Eyes attached
A wet masonry street, seen as a stereograph: two frames on one card, horses, wagons, and multi-story buildings.
- 03
18 August 1855
Brattle Street
Boston
Modern Eyes attached
A dense brick street, the roadway, and a church tower. Carriages are in the street.
- 04
Daguerreotypes likely before 22 April 1851
From Rincon Hill
San Francisco
Modern Eyes attached
The harbor, ships, a low city, and open hills. Gaps in the panorama are missing sections, not a crop made here.
- 05
Before the 18 April 1906 fire
Market Street, from the film
San Francisco · film frame
Modern Eyes attached
Market Street from a moving car: tracks, masonry blocks, traffic, and the Ferry Building tower at the end of the street.
- 20
December 1870
Looking landward
Duluth, Minnesota
The shoreline, the wooden town, and the hillside behind it, with the lake in the foreground of the photograph.
These 20 are a starting collection, not a numerical limit. Another photograph is another chair.