Gezicht op Pegli c. 1870 - 1890

Celestino Degoix captured this landscape of Pegli in Italy as a photograph in the late nineteenth century. What does it mean to look at a view? How does it relate to power? The image presents a seemingly objective view of the Ligurian landscape. Yet, the very act of selecting this vista and framing it within the photographic lens speaks to the social and cultural values of the time. In the 1800s, landscape imagery was popular among the rising middle class who wanted to assert their presence in the world. This photograph is connected to the growing tourism industry in Italy, where middle class travellers would visit places like Pegli and collect landscape imagery to be consumed as a souvenir. As historians of art, we can look at photographs like this one and use travel accounts and social surveys to help us understand the culture of tourism in nineteenth century Italy. By doing so, we can learn to consider the people for whom images like this one were made, and what these images meant to them.