GRAND TOUR AND PHOTO ALBUMS
(THE DAWN OF COLLECTING)
Newborn photography quickly took advantage of the technological improvements triggered by the industrial revolution, which brought about more and more user-friendly and sophisticated photographic equipment, so that professional photographers were encouraged to travel all around the world and reproduce the most interesting aspects of reality.
This was the beginning of the photographic “Grand Tour”, an adventure and a business at the same time; a trip towards places and peoples to be immortalised in images which had the potential of creating a market. The photographic Grand Tour took the place of the Grand Tour made by European scholars and intellectuals starting from the 17th century, based on the description of places and on lithographs.
Italy obviously was the most visited country, because it was considered as the cradle of civilisation, of art and history, and as a place with a rich archaeological heritage and an attractive nature.
By touring the length and breadth of Italy, Italian and foreign photographers provided us with a real census of places, monuments, and other artistic attractions.
These photographers never missed any detail, although there were a thousand organisational problems, like finding the best place for taking a picture, as well as technical problems, such as the need of modifying the equipment in order to get the appropriate framing. After the picture was taken, an additional job had to be done: it had to be appropriately painted in water-colours, so that it would be closer to reality and more charming for the potential buyers.
The most common names were: Frith, Sommer, Brogi, Naya, Alinari, Salviati and Van Lint. However, the images were often anonymous, because the increasing demand required the printing of more copies.
Tourists who were visiting a foreign city, or foreigners in transit, bought the pictures which represented the local attractions, in order to remember the trip, as it later happened with illustrated postcards. Therefore, collecting pictures soon became a fashion, either in the form of little encyclopaedic collections for the family, or more simply in the form of little collections witnessing to and remembering the trips which were made by the family.
These old pictures are now more than ever memory and document of our past.
It is rare but especially expensive for an amateur collector to get a photo album of that time which is intact and well-kept. Indeed, unfortunately, impromptu junk dealers and antique dealers, using their skill and their shrewdness, sold the pages of many photo albums separately, knowing that in this way they could have higher and quicker earnings.
Let’s illustrate
what we have said with some vintage pictures: 
