On The Viewing Platform

On the Viewing Platform

A wide-ranging study of the painted panorama’s influence on art, photography, and film This ambitious volume presents a multifaceted account of the legacy of the circular painted panorama and its far-reaching influence on art, photography, film, and architecture. From its 18th-century origins, the panorama quickly became a global mass-cultural phenomenon, often linked to an imperial worldview. Yet it also transformed modes of viewing and exerted a lasting, visible impact on filmmaking techniques, museum displays, and contemporary installation art. On the Viewing Platform offers close readings of works ranging from proto-panoramic Renaissance cityscapes and 19th-century paintings and photographs to experimental films and a wide array of contemporary art. Extensively researched and spectacularly illustrated, this volume proposes an expansive new framework for understanding the histories of art, film, and spectatorship.

On the Viewing Platform

Tales from Elsewhere

This is a second foray into the author's life experiences as she re-introduces readers to her extended family and friends who were first encountered in her previous book Tales from the Seaside. This selection of tales are taken from other family holidays which span the author's lifetime. Readers accompany the family as they gallop across Europe, go north of the border and attempt to exchange their water-skis for snow skis, deal with mother and daughter drunken escapades, excitable vibrating beds, being marooned in a dinghy after losing the oars and the author's first (and only) bull-fighting experience. More fun and frolics experienced by all.