This issue of 19 explores the relevance of nineteenth-century visual technologies in shaping contemporary understandings of perception, memory, and cultural practice. The articles collected here examine the interplay between technological innovation, spectatorship, and ideological frameworks. Through analyses of immersive exhibitions, virtual reality reconstructions, and contemporary photographic interventions, the collection investigates how historical technologies of vision continue to shape collective memory, national identity, and public engagement. While nineteenth-century visual apparatuses have often been interpreted as instruments of control, objectification, and passive immersion, recent scholarship highlights their capacity to foster viewer agency and critical engagement. Contributors adopt a media archaeological approach, attending not only to canonical technologies but also to experimental or marginalized practices that challenge teleological narratives of progress. From immersive panoramas and stage spectacles to early photographic processes such as daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, and albumen prints, historical case studies demonstrate how visual media mediated experiences of reality, illusion, and historical memory. These nineteenth-century forms are shown to resonate in contemporary art and heritage practice, where artists and curators recontextualize, critique, and reinterpret their optical logics and ideological assumptions. Contributors examine both the disciplinary and imaginative potentials of visual media, emphasizing ambiguity, multiplicity, and the capacity of spectators to co-create meaning. By situating nineteenth-century technologies within broader historical and contemporary frameworks, this issue demonstrates their dual role as tools of control and instruments of critique. It highlights the importance of historical perspective in understanding contemporary digital and immersive media, inviting readers to reconsider assumptions about linear technological progress and the ideological stakes of vision. Ultimately, the collection illuminates the persistent relevance of nineteenth-century visuality for debates about perception, agency, and cultural memory today.

Cover image: Yadegar Asisi, The Panorama ROME 312 with the visitors’ platform in the centre (detail). Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yadegar_Asisi_Panorama_ROM312_Dach.jpg>

Editors: Gülru Çakmak (Guest Editor), Patricia Smyth (Guest Editor)

Introduction

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Articles

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