En Route:

Travel Photography from UVM Collections

September 13 - December 14, 2007
Wolcott Gallery

In the second half of the 19th century, the medium of photography and the global tourism industry flourished in tandem with one another. The expansion of railroad and steamer networks enabled Western tourists to venture across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and parts of Africa. Tourists followed ambitious itineraries that were shaped, in part, by early travel photographs depicting urban centers, archaeological ruins, exotic cultures, and natural wonders. Available for sale at exhibitions, through mail order, or at the sites themselves, travel photographs by both professionals and amateurs were collected for their aesthetic value, their usefulness in planning or dreaming of future journeys, or simply as souvenirs of places visited. As much a document of the photographer's personal aesthetic and the Western cultural imagination as of the people and places that they depicted, travel photographs offer a view onto the ways that this new medium both reflected and shaped the experiences of Western tourists. This exhibition features travel photographs and albums from or promised to the Fleming's collection alongside stereographic images generously loaned by Special Collections at UVM's Bailey/Howe Library.