Article ID: CBB227100306

Making Engineering Visible: Photography and the Politics of Drinking Water in Modern Paris (July 2020)

unapi

Visual images shape knowledge, as scholars of visual representation have long argued. Historians of technology stand to benefit from understanding how seemingly objective photographs of colossal engineering works are much more than technical illustrations. With their unmatched legibility and reproducibility, photographs can crucially shape the public’s view. Civil engineers were well aware of how photographs could advance their cause. Photographs of infrastructures were part of a political project: the builders of Paris’s modern water system harnessed photographs as political tools in the contentious construction of aqueducts bringing drinking water to Paris in the 1860s and 1870s. This article examines how photographs engineered the public’s understanding of large water projects and landscape transformation.

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Authors & Contributors
Shulman, Chaim
Bertagni, Stefano
Davis, Craig A.
Dal Piaz, Giorgio Vittorio
Soldani, Simonetta
Daniel Pérez Zapico
Concepts
Infrastructure
Engineering
Water supply
Technology
Urban planning
Science and politics
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
18th century
Medieval
Places
Italy
London (England)
France
Tuscany (Italy)
Paris (France)
Los Angeles (California)
Institutions
History of the Urban Environment Book Series
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