The metrics of landscape: Stereo fieldwork by Francisco Afonso Chaves and other Portuguese explorers

Resultado de pesquisarevisão de pares

Resumo

Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and on the constructive role of the mind in visual perception, this became no obstacle to its scientific uses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. On the contrary, combined with photography, the stereoscope embodied both the imperialist politics of the 19th century and its scientific ideology. These pairs of twin images perfected photography as an accurate and credible scientific instrument and gave explorers the chance to map, calculate and “grab the world in an image”. The use of stereo photography in geodesic and topographic fieldworks is one of the best evidences of such scientific practices, largely overlooked by stereo photography studies. Here, we introduce the stereoviews by Portuguese explorers such as Francisco Afonso Chaves, an early-20th-century Azorean naturalist, and analyse a particular series of Verascope glass plates which represent theodolites photographed during his fieldwork. The identification of common uses of theodolites in the stereo collections of other explorers suggests the advantage of expanding fieldwork to the laboratory, a fact David Brewster (1856) would naturally recognise as a “rational pleasure”.

Idioma originalInglês
Páginas (de-até)99-108
Número de páginas10
RevistaArtnodes
Volume2018
Número de emissão21
DOIs
Estado da publicaçãoPublicadas - 1 jan. 2018

Nota bibliográfica

Publisher Copyright:
© FUOC, 2018.

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