High-speed Ruins: Rubble photography in Berlin, 1871-1914

As it was pronounced the new capital of the Second German Empire in 1871, Berlin became a city visibly marked by aggressive expansion efforts. It was to be a modern metropolis that would stand alongside much older European capitals such as Paris, London, and Vienna. Its transformation involved massive demolition activities, vividly captured by urban photographers of different backgrounds and with varying intentions and audiences. Within the context of this contested urban building and demolition scenario, this article identifies rubble photography as an emergent genre. This term and its subject are distinct from the "rubble film" rubric for post-World-War II movies set in Germany's bombed-out cities and also distinct from a history of images of ruins. The latter evokes the frequent use of the motif in nineteenth-century landscape paintings but can also be found in photographs that emphasize the elegiac connotation of crumbling buildings. Rubble photographs, however, are a subcategory of both event photography and the later photojournalism, both new photographic genres that emerged during the rise of photography as a mass medium during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Rubble photographs are thus part of a modern visual canon that fed its onlookers spectacular, instantaneous views of a world in transition.