How the Victorians Saw Things

In the space of three eventful generations, the Victorians witnessed and contributed to profound transformations affecting industry, culture, art and science. Such upheavals required a permanent adaptation of the gaze to understand a changing world. This modified gaze was generated by new points of view, which displaced the observer from his traditional, physical or mental, distant and frontal position. The hegemony of the front-view linear perspective started to crumble in the nineteenth century. Things did not necessarily have to be seen at eye level, from a distance. Objects could now be seen from above, or in close-up, or from inside. These new perspectives affected as much as they were the result of, changing relations between the human subject and the outside world.