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Stephan Oettermann. The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider (New York: Zone Books, 1997 [1980]), 407 pp., 176 illustrations, $40.00 (cloth).
Within the steadily growing field of visual studies, new approaches to the examination of visual cultures have opened new avenues of inquiry. Armed with new sets of questions, scholars have reexamined an array of visual media, shedding new light on the ways in which people, through sight, have experienced a world increasingly premised on signs and images. Nevertheless, reconstructing what might be labeled a "visual history" of any period remains no simple task, especially when few extant textual examples remain. Clearly it is this lack of evidence that has kept scholars away from exploring the panorama, one of the most popular visual amusements of the last century. Striking out into an underexplored territory, Stephan Oettermann has reassembled the nearly lost history of the panorama in Europe and the United States which he brings forth interspersed with thoughtful and useful analysis. Originally published in 1980, this new translation by Deborah Lucas Schneider fills an enormous gap in visual studies for English-speaking scholars who earlier only had access to this rather important text in its original German form.
Because so few of the panorama paintings themselves have survived, the writing of the visual medium's history has been stalled if not altogether stultified. Despite the lack of primary texts available for investigation, Oettermann aptly makes much of the materials he has gathered. Without sidestepping an extensive treatment of individual panoramic canvases, Oettermann yields an abundance of insight concerning the emergence of...