Panoramic Photographs

Some of the people in old panoramic photographs appear twice. A quick runner could stand at one end of a long group, wait for the camera to swing past, then sprint behind the crowd and take a place at the other end before the lens got there.

That trick worked because of how the pictures were made. The great age of the panorama began in the early 1900s with the Cirkut camera, which sat on a clockwork base and turned slowly across the scene while the film moved past a narrow slit. A single exposure could take in a full circle. The prints that came out of it were often 4 or 5 feet long and less than a foot tall.

Panoramic photographs were made in the 19th century too, usually by setting several plates side by side. But the rotating camera made it practical, and from about 1900 to the 1930s it became a regular trade. Photographers set up at conventions, reunions, company picnics and army camps and sold prints to everyone in the frame.

The pictures in a collection like this fall into a few groups. Military units are the largest, especially from World War I, when whole regiments lined up in rows to be photographed before shipping out. Then come cityscapes shot from rooftops and hills, disaster scenes such as San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, bathing beauty contests, school classes, factories and national parks.

The thing worth noticing is the curve. Because the camera turns, a straight street in front of it can bend into an arc, and a row of people standing in a straight line can look like they are standing in a horseshoe. The flip side is detail. A good panorama of a city holds every sign, streetcar and pedestrian along a mile of view, and it rewards looking at it a few inches at a time.