Photography and the Limits of Place

The study considers how place is historically manifested by the invention of photography. This will be to investigate where photography has developed uses influencing the allocation and administration of places, in particular the early architectural and topographical photography in the history of Paris in the Second and Third Empires of France. The study also examines the affects of the photographic image as an appearance removed from a certainty of the world, yet consisting of an excess of information about the world beyond immediate human perception. Consequently the apparatus of photography is a process of mechanical production and its products assume a power beyond their physical presence. The study will show how photography introduces a modern ‘theological’ concept into ways of seeing by the light sensitive imprint amounting to a new image of visualisation. The thesis supports the claim that the history of urban space is specifically defined by the subject of photography in its historical context