Victorians seeking escape from an increasingly industrialised Britain sought tranquillity and adventure in Killarney’s poetic landscape; Donal Horgan looks at the role photography played in stimulating this interest
Killarney is unique in the scale of attention it received from photographic companies such as the Lawrence Photographic Company. This is hardly surprising given the extent to which the spheres of tourism and photography are entwined. In the 19th century, photography was a novelty and a science with the result that wherever tourists went, photographic companies followed, keen to sell their reproductions. These views eventually found a place in the Victorian drawing room and served not just as a momento but also a reminder of how the Victorians had extended the technical and geographical boundaries of their world
