Far & Away

Discover the rich variety of travel photographs from the museum’s collection. Spanning the nineteenth century to the present, these images offer an expansive view of a beloved genre of picture-making.

Photography was invented in the late 1830s, around the same time that modern travel emerged. The first generation of camera artists included many adventurers who carried their equipment far from home, capturing extraordinary views of monuments and landscapes. Large productions of these images were expensive and rare, destined for libraries and wealthy patrons. Soon a broader commercial market emerged as photographers all over the globe made smaller prints that could be sold to tourists or those unable to travel, ready for pasting into albums. The most popular form became the stereoview, a technology which permitted an immersive, thrilling 3D experience at home.

As cameras became common household devices in the 1900s, travel photos—like family snapshots—were made by artists and amateurs alike. Some of the more recent photographs in this installation are by artists who were themselves tourists and assembled their views into albums, or who cast an ironic eye on travel photography altogether.

This installation is part of an ongoing series exploring histories of photography through the museum’s collection of nearly 40,000 photographs.