last reads

Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles By Erkki Huhtamo. Boston, MIT Press, $45.00 Reviewed by Russell A. Potter The paramount mass-media attraction of its era, the 'moving panorama' has, until now, received only piecemeal treatment; cast in the shadow of its larger brother, the fixed, 360-dgree panorama, it has generally been regarded as an historical side-note. There have been studies of moving panoramas of certain subjects -- such as my own Arctic Spectacles -- and some of particular regions, such as Mimi Colligan's Canvas Documentaries: Panoramic Entertainment in 19th-Century Autralia and New Zealand , but no comprehensive, international consideration of the role of moving panoramas in the history of visual culture. That is, until now: Erkki Huhtamo's Illusions in Motio n not only takes up the larger histories of this medium, but documents them with an enormous number of hitherto-unseen primary-source materials. For a me...