Trains and cameras: Photography and the creation of a railway landscape in Portugal (late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries)

Abstract

This article analyses the construction and circulation of representations of Portuguese mainland railways by photography in the illustrated press in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before World War I. The analysis uses a methodology combining semiotics with discourse analysis in journalism, which is applied to a sample of 406 photographs published in Portuguese magazines between 1872 and 1914. This study shows how these photographs created a new railway landscape, different from that fabricated previously by photographic albums (republished in the press as woodcuts), where human agents were more present, the utilisation of railways is underscored and dire aspects of the circulation of trains (namely train accidents) are more visible. This article contributes to the field of transport history with a perspective from visual culture and to the debate about the use of photography in historical research, as a reliable primary source, much more than a mere illustrative support.