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Old World photography
Street scenes, demolition, construction, rooftops, a dome, a completed boulevard. The camera on the ground or on a known high point — not a lithograph pretending to be a lens.
c. 1865·Paris
Place Dauphine
Charles Marville
Street photograph
The triangular place at the Île de la Cité, photographed at street height before later clearing. Marville was hired to record streets Haussmann’s plan would erase. This is a street photograph of a specific place, not a bird’s-eye of Paris.
Open plate
1870·Vienna
Staatsbahnhof under construction, 13 March 1870
Hermann Voigtländer
Street photograph · Replaced
The departure hall of the Staatsbahnhof (later Ostbahnhof) as a building site, dated 13 March 1870. Scaffolding, winter ground, a camera on a construction job. Old World photography of making, not a city overview.
Open plate
1870–77·Vienna
Toward the center of Vienna from Mariahilf
Anonymous photographer; published by Oscar Kramer.
Street photograph
A stereo card: two nearly identical frames on one mount, looking from Mariahilf toward the center. Street, façades, a city view from the sixth district. Not a bird’s-eye, and not a single full-plate panorama. Record the stereo as printed.
Open plate
c. 1870s·London
London Bridge from the Southwark side
Anonymous photographer. Rijksmuseum, Views in London series.
Street photograph
London Bridge photographed from Southwark: the Monument, St Magnus, the Adelaide Hotel, part of Fishmongers’ Hall, river traffic. A city photograph at street-and-water height, not a bird’s-eye of the whole capital.
Open plate
c. 1877·Paris
Avenue de l’Opéra — demolition
Charles Marville
Street photograph
The cut for the Avenue de l’Opéra: a street of houses opened, timber shores, rubble, a camera standing in the demolition. Marville recorded what Haussmann’s boulevards destroyed. Street photography of unmaking. Not an overview of Paris.
Open plate
c. 1878·Paris
Avenue de l’Opéra, toward Palais Garnier
Period photograph of the completed avenue. Marville photographed the new cut in 1877–78; others issued similar views. Photographer of this specific scan is not fixed on the file.
Street photograph · Surviving
The new avenue photographed looking toward Palais Garnier: a wide paved cut, a horse tram, kiosks, façades lining a street that had not existed a few years earlier. A camera on the finished boulevard. Set it beside Marville’s demolition plate. One is the cut. This is what occupied the cut afterward.
Open plate
c. 1880–1900·Paris
Palais Garnier
Period photograph of the completed opera. Photographer and exact year are not fixed on this scan.
Street photograph · Surviving
The principal façade photographed from the square: columns, sculpture, the gilded groups on the attic, a street of carriages. A camera on a finished monumental opera. Present status: surviving. Set it beside the Avenue de l’Opéra plate if you want the building tested against the street that was cut to face it.
Open plate
c. 1880–1900·Constantinople
Hagia Sophia from the south
Period photograph. Abdullah Frères and others issued exterior views of Ayasofya in these decades. Photographer of this specific scan is not fixed on the file.
Street photograph · Altered
Hagia Sophia photographed from the south: the dome, half-domes, Ottoman minarets, a street of timber houses. A camera in late-nineteenth-century Constantinople. This is the building in Istanbul, not a Gothic church misfiled under the same name. Present status: altered.
Open plate