Cosmoramas, immersive viewing and the evolution of peep practice

Abstract

The cosmorama was one of the most common forms of visual show between 1820 and 1860. Exhibited widely across Europe and the Americas, it has nonetheless been overshadowed by scholarship on the more large-scale formats of the panorama, diorama and magic lantern. This is partly because it is often conflated with the peepshow due to them sharing very similar features: both formats engrossed and entranced by having audiences view painted scenes through large convex lenses. Yet the cosmorama (which itself had a number of cognate names) is important as a distinct genus, part of a family of immersive lens-based viewing formats. The cosmorama demonstrates how ‘peep practice’ diversified in response in response to new audience constituencies and display opportunities in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was a vital agent in taking pictures to the people, engaging bourgeois viewers in cities across Europe. Through a detailed study of cosmorama exhibition in Britain, this article demonstrates that the cosmorama was a key part of the proliferation of popular shows beyond established and formal venues. It was in the vanguard of pop-up shows that could open in all types of city centre locations, moving between these and established fairground circuits. Finally, the cosmorama illuminates the hitherto overlooked development of transnational networks of exhibition, with a number of examples of European showpeople visiting Britain.