Treinstation van Hannover 1869 - 1872

This stereo card of the Hannover train station was produced by Johann Friedrich Stiehm, using photographic techniques that were at the cutting edge of mass media in their time. Consider for a moment the labor involved. The photograph had to be taken, of course, and then printed in multiples. These were carefully mounted on card stock and distributed widely. Look closely, and you can see the texture of the cobbled street and the classical architecture of the buildings. Photography like this helped to materialize the idea of a unified Germany, creating a shared visual culture. Such images were avidly collected, fueled by the rise of tourism, and by the desire for an immersive experience of modernity itself. It is easy to overlook such everyday images, but they tell us a great deal about the relationship between industrialization, labor, and the cultural landscape of the 19th century. This was a world increasingly experienced through machine-made pictures.