Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination

The advent of photography opened new worlds to 19th-century viewers, who became able to visualize themselves, their immediate surroundings, their communities, and the world beyond. The geographical imagination—the ability to know the world and situate oneself in space and time—fostered the expectations and applications of photographic technologies, and photographic technologies expresses the form and reach of the geographical imagination. This dialectic is the basis of this collection of intriguing essays, which explore the diverse ways in which the relationship manifested.