Photographic excursions in tourism.

• Position: USA Yesterday - Site Seeing: Photographic Excursions in Tourism

THE VISUALLY ENGAGING and highly entertaining exhibition "Site Seeing: Photographic Excursions in Tourism" explores the relationship among tourism, photography, and motion pictures. It features more than 250 photographs and fascinating artifacts, including early travel photography from the 1840s, illustrated books and albums, tourist guides, postcards, souvenirs, and contemporary works of art.

"Site Seeing" illustrates how photography and motion pictures came to define how we see and know the world. By focusing on tourism, the threads of history and culture intertwine in an illuminating display of visual rarities and popular artifacts. More than any other visual media, photography and motion pictures encouraged the human desire to explore the world at large and its vibrant cultures, whether through actual travel or within the safe confines of home via publications, magazines, albums, and home movies.

The exhibition is divided into several sections that look at world travel before and after the invention of photography:

Tracings of the Wider World examines the experience of travel imagery before the advent of photography and motion pictures, including etchings of cityscapes and magic lantern slides. Included are the initial examples of "travel" motion pictures--the Lumiere Brothers first publically screened films of 1895, featuring a train arriving at a station and ocean waves crashing on the shore.

A World Within Reach explores the impact of photography and motion pictures on our experience in the world. The introduction of photographically illustrated books and albums, as well as panoramas, helped shape the initial impulse of tourism in the mid 19th...