During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the St. Louis Street Department generated one of the most extensive troves of images ever made of the river city. Ostensibly created to document municipal challenges and improvements, the Street Department photographs inadvertently captured richly detailed scenes of everyday life. Capturing the City examines this collection, placing the people and landscapes depicted in the photographs within the broader context of a rapidly urbanizing, industrializing metropolis. The ...
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During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the St. Louis Street Department generated one of the most extensive troves of images ever made of the river city. Ostensibly created to document municipal challenges and improvements, the Street Department photographs inadvertently captured richly detailed scenes of everyday life. Capturing the City examines this collection, placing the people and landscapes depicted in the photographs within the broader context of a rapidly urbanizing, industrializing metropolis. The St. Louis Street Department began using photographs sporadically to document its work as early as 1895. In 1900, the city hired Charles Clement Holt (1866-1925) to lead a more systematic documentary process. Holt, an Ohio native who came to St. Louis in the 1890s, soon proved an indispensible part of municipal government. He expanded the photography operation from an average of 90 exposures per year to over 6,000 by 1914. By the time he died, Holt oversaw a full-fledged photography division, providing services to nearly all city departments, from Streets and Sewers to Parks, Waterworks, Police, Harbors and Wharfs. Most of the images taken during Holt's tenure have been lost. However, thanks to the efforts of William Swekosky, a small but superb collection of photographs by Holt and his staff remains. In the 1950s, Swekosky--a St. Louis dentist, photographer, city historian, and pioneering preservationist--salvaged over 300 glass plate negatives that would otherwise have been discarded. Today, the Street Department photographs form a major part of the Swekosky Collection at the Missouri History Museum, providing researchers with an immense font of information on the visual culture of the city during a period of rapid transformation. The book presents a collection of photographs that are significant beyond their locally specific contexts. The St. Louis Street Department's photographic project gained traction as part of a national trend among cities to use the camera as a documentary tool. Reformers such as Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine imagined that the camera served as a 'truth-telling' instrument, and used photography to mobilize public consciousness. Many cities, from New York to Cleveland to Philadelphia, employed photographers to document slums, workhouses, and crime scenes as well as municipal improvements such as street lighting, pavement, and model housing. Through the work of making images, Holt and his staff showcased both the challenges and successes of government action to improve urban conditions. Consistent with most Progressive-era photography, their efforts contributed to the record of ongoing public works while shaping the very narrative of urban progress itself. A substantive introduction will place the collection in the entwined histories of St. Louis, progressive reform, and urban photography.
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