The 19th Century revives the 18th Century taste for foreign travel, with the additional feature of involving the middle classes as much as the aristocracy. This new middle class needs to affirm its new social status and position as the dominant class (after the Revolution), it invents an image, photography, and a means of escape, travel.
In these developments we can see the influence of the ideas of the Encyclopedists and of the artistic movements of the time, mainly Romanticism and Neoclassicism. These will be developed as an iconic approach to imposing or mysterious landscapes and to the exploration of the ruins of ancient civilizations.
Photography, thanks to the relative speed of its operation and naturalistic aspect, makes it possible to create a museum of the world. In 1841, the Ethnological Society of Paris was established, to create a "photographic museum" of the human races. Thus, a racist vision of the world can be found in the ethnographic works of the time, these images are some of the first ever travel photographs (the legacy of fortunate amateurs).
When he announced the invention of photography, in 1839, Arago (a French academic) underlined the interest it would have for the field of archaeology. Indeed, the daguerreotype (an invention of the Frenchmen, Niepce and Daguerre, which created a unique image on silver plated metal plate) was used on excavation sites from 1840. The process was very easy to handle, in fact, the development of the calotype (an invention of Talbot, an Englishman, which created a reproducible negative) was constrained due to protection by patents. But as from 1851, the process with wet collodion (glass plate sensitized at the time of the camera work, producing negative) will spread.
One of main events in the development of travel photography had its roots in Champollion's Egyptian campaign, of 1829. From 1849-1851, the photographer Maxime du Camp, accompanied by Gustave Flaubert, retraced the same route along the Nile and shot all of the monuments (on calotype). The exposure time was then extremely long and the sites were always deserted, which gave the images an aura of dreamlike contemplation.
As far as the logistic problems inherent in the practice of photography at the time were concerned, Maxime du Camp relates that "learning photography is easy, but transporting the necessary tools using mules, camels, and men, that is a difficult problem". One should remember that the view body could weigh ten kg (enlargment was impracticable, the view bodies were either 30x40cm or 50x60cm), some photographers set out with a ton hardware.
Francis Wey (a member of the management committee of the Heliographic Society, created in 1851) suggested the routes of several "heliographic voyages". He wished to create a "picturesque and archaeological museum of France". This led to the Heliographic Mission, led by the photographers Bayard, Le Gray, Mestral, Baldus and Le Secq. Unfortunately, the images were not used afterwards, Francis Wey wrote that "the public is to be deprived of these prints over which everyone is arguing".
Indeed, there was a real public for images depicting local or foreign journeys. Books containing prints (taken by the photographers themselves or made by an industrial process at a photographic printing press, such as that of Blanquart-Evrard) came to compete with those erudite works which, until then, had been illustrated by engravings.
On their own, the images were an unquestionable success, they were distributed by the photographer, an editor, a merchant of prints or in the form of postcards (in the same kind of places where we can find them today: shops for tourists, hotels, stations, places of interest). On this subject, Ado Kyrou (in his book "L'Age d'or de la carte postale") writes: "sending a postcard which represents the view of a landscape where you are, is an assertion of the fact that you are able to travel, and is thus a symbol of its social status". The images are alos published by periodicals such as Monde Illustre, Tour du Monde, which contain a number of reproductions in the form of engravings on wood.
In fact, it was necessary to wait until the 1890s and the development of process-engraving to provide the production of inalterable images (after a certain standardization of printing with albumin in 1875, and then with gelatino-bromide in 1890). The industrialization of these techniques then allowed consumption on a really massive scale.
With the development of industry, the need for carrying out a topographical survey of the world was conceived, in order to exploit its resources, this became explicit in the form of orders on behalf of governments, companies or aristocrats. Photographers not profiting from this had to try to satisfy the tastes of the public whilst at the same time taking the lead in the new market for travel images.
The photographer is one of the essential actors of the celebrations of new constructions of railways, modern means to travel. Thus, in 1855, Baldus photographs the insertion of metal architecture in the landscape at the time of the travel of the queen Victoria along the Boulogne-Paris line, without forgetting to carry out some catches of sight of the nature without sign of machine. He will start again with the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean line in 1859.
In the same way, after the American Civil War, the conquest of the Wild West was epitomised by the construction of the transcontinental railroad. This victory provided the opportunity to photograph undiscovered landscapes. In 1861, Carleton F. Watkins travelled through the Yosemite valley with the task of capturing the romantic feelings evoked by such unspoilt and imposing natural surroundings.
Paradoxically, landscape photography destined for the tourist blossomed earlier in South America. The case of the photographer Desire Charnay comes to mind, a French explorer who travelled in search of the ancient Mayan cities and was supported by the Ministry for Public Education; he took photographs from 1857 to 1860. Up until the 1880s, he travelled to Madagascar, Java, Australia etc...
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it should be stressed that the nationality of the photographer available was of course closely related to the colonial empires established at the time. Thus, Asia and the Indies were particularly photographed by the British. However, we can cite the example of Japan which, resisting all external imperialism, prevented the introduction of photography before 1854. Felice Beato, who, inspired by woodcuts was one of the most remarkable photographers in Japan, with in 1868 (the Mutsuhito emperor then supports the opening and the modernization of its country), two albums of 100 prints 21x29cm: Photographic Views of Japan and Native Types of Japan. Images received well by the local and foreign public. But, during years, this Japanese imagery remains strongly passeist.
With the growth of the market, photographers had to specialize. After the explorer photographers, such as Maxime du Camp - who travelled in Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, Syria - or such as Gabriel de Rumine - a Russian aristocrat who photographed Nice, Italy, Greece, Palestine - we find photographers who only concentrated on one region. Consequently, the practice has been robbed of its originality.
Thus we understand the various roles of travel photography in the 19th Century in three different ways:
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