Eva Bendová – Václav Hájek
Distance, Speed, Depth. Changing Perceptions of Landscape as a Result of Modernisation of Travel During the 19th century
From the beginning of the 19th century, a new type of observation and vision was developing in connection with changes in technical and epistemological conditions. Journeys to the countryside could culminate in a climb to a vantage point and later to a lookout tower, which brought the opportunity of gaining new perspectives and the ability to contemplate the horizon or the distance. With the arrival of railways, a new dimension of observation emerged, one that represented the perception of previously imperceptible speed, which, like the aforementioned desire for visual experience of the horizon, reduced the spatial limits of perception in some way. Images from flying balloons expanded our subject matter by adding a third perspective, one of depth and detachment. All three types of visual experience constituted fundamental shifts in the viewer's relationship to the landscape in the 19th century and translated strongly into pictures as well as strategies and motivations for travel. Our paper is based on specific examples of depictions and events related to the perception of landscape in Bohemia, namely the construction of the first lookout tower at Kleť, which was initiated by Joseph II von Schwarzenberg and his chief engineer Jan Sallaba. Ferdinand Runk made drawings of a circular panorama from the tower as early as 1831. The expansion of the spatial possibilities of perception was stimulated by the construction of further lookout towers, with the Petřín tower presented by the advertising strategies of the Czech Tourist Club as an attraction. Pictures of latent speed in the Czech environment were presented by photographers capturing the railways and pictures of depth by the first photographs taken from a balloon basket by Jan Plischke in 1906. However, magazine critics of the time condemned them for their loss of horizon and scale.
Keywords: landscape perception - Kleť lookout tower - Ferdinand Runk - railway travel - balloon flight - panoramas
design by Bedřich Vémola
