Getty Museum
Boston After the Great Fire
Creator
James Wallace BlackAmerican Photographer · 1825–1896
All works by this person →> Look at almost any photograph of a loved friend, and what do you see--nothing but a map, a face, but without soul; and [look at] the advantage the artist has in being able to put that expression in the face which is impossible to do with the camera, and [look at] how the public expects us to do for $5 in fifteen minutes what [a painter]... would charge $500 for doing, and take weeks of study. >
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1872
- Medium
- Albumen silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- aa253efe-3ff7-4e62-a772-85636e812c04
In a series of articles published in *The Philadelphia Photographer,* an anonymous observer remarked: "There is no subject, probably, more fascinating to the lover of the picturesque than ruins of every description." Scenes of destruction such as these presented a rare opportunity for American photographers, who did not have ready access to the ruined pictorial splendor of their European counterparts. Perhaps the greatest irony was that the buildings that turned so quickly and thoroughly into ruins worthy of Pompeii or Rome were themselves modeled on European structures, though constructed of less durable materials. The photographs that James Wallace Black made of the fire in Boston's financial district were made into a photographic album titled *Ruins of the Great Fire in Boston, November 1872.* Here Black created a panoramic overview of the district, still smoldering from the inferno.
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