The history of panoramic photography is as old as "simple" photography or almost: the idea of taking a circular vision is initially implemented with the simple technique of mosaic of images, that is, taking a series of photos in sequence, rotating the camera, and then juxtaposing and pasting the prints each other. W.H. Fox Talbot is considered one of the first to have used this method, which did not require special cameras.
W.H Fox Talbot, Talbot's printing establishment at Reading - c.1845
Calvert Richard Jones, Napoli - 1845-1846
The panorama of Cincinnati by Charles Fontayne and William S. Porter dated 1848, was made with daguerrotyps.
Charles Fontayne and William S. Porter, Daguerreotype View of Cincinnati Taken from Newport - 1848
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One of the first photographs with a full 360 ° angle of view(1866) was made by Aimé Civiale, a documentary photographer from the Alps, taken in fourteen daguerrotypes.
It is particular how the aroud vision is expressed especially in the mountains: the tradition of photographic panoramas belongs mainly to mountaineers.
Aimé Civiale, Panorama circulaire pris de la Bella Tola - 1866
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Felice Beato, an English photographer of Italian origins, produced a large amount of panoramic images (many in the east and in China), most of which covered no more than 180 ° of angle of view.
Costantinopoli - 1876, Felice Beato with James Robertson
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Below a 360° shot made by Muybridge in 1877, San Francisco:
San Francisco 1877 - Eadweard Muybridge
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The photo-mosaic or the spatial sequence of images is a technique that has been used for many years: for years and even today, architects, to document large scenarios in a single image, create sequences of photographic prints, which when properly trimmed, are mounted and glued on cardboard.
Anonimus, Aprilia (Italy) - 1931
Andrè Corboz - ILAUD 1995
T. Garbasso - Urbino, area of the furnace - ILAUD 1995
Many artists and photographers have used this technique: for example, Paolo Monti uses only two photographs, wisely identifying the point where the seam of the prints must be ...
Palazzo Ducale, Venezia - Paolo Monti, 1981
The Swiss Emil Schulthess, in 1950 takes twenty-four frames, at an hour's interval to cover the arc of the day, and rotating the camera 15° each time, to cover the entire 360° circle: a spatial and temporal sequence .
Schulthess is remembered for his book on the Swiss Panorama Alps in 1982, a 360° documentation taken by the Swiss Alpine panorama helicopter using the Seitz Roundshot camera.
Emil Schulthess, Mitternachtssonne, Hekkingen, Norway - 1950
David Hockney from the 80s creates landscapes and views formed by mosaics of hundreds of Polaroids or photographic prints. In some it covers 180 ° vertical angle of view(1)
David Hockney, Pearblossom Highway, 11-18th April 1986, #2
David Hockney, The Brooklyn Bridge, Nov. 28 1982
Like Hockney, the Dutch conceptual artist Jan Dibbets combines images taken in spatial sequence and reports their angle of view.
Jan Dibbets - Panorama Dutch Mountain 12 x 15° Sea II A 1971
Cristina Omenetto takes an overview on the roof of the World Trade Center (in 1995) obtained using a Holga camera with a sequence of "spliced" shots from the fact that the film is dragged with each shot not totally of the frame space, and therefore with a overlap between one shot and the next one.
Cristina Omenetto, WTC-New York - 1995
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NOTE
1) David Hockney has been famously critical of photography: "It's all right if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops-for a split of second". In the photo collages that he made in the early 1980s, he was able to overcome what he has called "the tyranny of one-point perspective."To create each collage, Hockney took hundreds of snapshots of an individual subject or scene over periods of minutes or hour – effectively capturing the passage of time – that he then combine into a unified work. While each photograph has its own single-point perspective, when assembled with others, multiple simultaneous vantages are achieved in one picture.Hockney's experience as a draftsman was fundamental in his careful adhering of these many perspectives into tightly wrought compositions – in fact, he considers these works to be drawings and calls them "joiners".
A Bigger Exhibition - DeYoung Museum , San Francisco, Oct 2013
