This presentation looks at a set of twelve panoramic photographs taken in Berlin around the turn of the 19th century reading them both as historic documents and as generators of a specific city image. It tackles modern European urban experience by investigating the narratives of progress and tradition that went hand in hand with Berlin's comparatively late evolution as Germany's capital in the late 19th century. These panoramas of traffic nodes, waterways, city squares, and historic landmarks as telling examples for what has been described as the notion of a simultaneous shrinkage and expansion of space due to the advent of rail travel. They also reflect how this city of consuming spectators processed the acceleration of their daily lives and the advancement of visual and reproductive printing technologies.

Miriam Paeslack is Assistant Professor in the Arts Management Program at the University at Buffalo. Trained as an art historian and historian of law, she specializes in the critical analysis of visual representations of urban spaces and concepts of the urban in respect to memory and identity. At the University at Buffalo she teaches courses on the history and theory of photography and visual culture, urban imagery, critical museum studies, museum management and academic research.