Photography and Early Motor Touring in Britain

Abstract

This article explores the arrival of the motorcar in Britain as it polarised photographers’ opinions like no other means of transport before. The article asks, more specifically, why those photographers who came from the experience of cycling believed that the new transport technology hindered the practices of observation that they treasured and, relatedly, how the use that the motorists made of the camera ushered in a new way of being modern. It does so by reconstructing the impact that the new material and social experiences triggered by motoring, together with the visual culture that accompanied its popularisation, had in shaping the automobile’s relationship with photography. The article argues that photographers’ conflicted attitudes towards the role that the motorcar played in their leisure lives is reflected in a tension between established and emerging machine-driven visual epistemologies at the beginning of the twentieth century.