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An assessment of the visual output of the eugenicist geographer and landscape heritage activist Vaughan Cornish (1862-1948) constitutes a void in scholarly studies by geographers and historians. This is striking as the 1890s, the period in which Cornish established himself as an authoritative lecturer, saw significant developments in photographic technologies, as well as the popularisation of geographically themed entertainments and the expansion of academic geography in Britain. Amalgamating scholarship in histories of the lantern and photography, and in geography, on visuality and materiality this article investigates Cornish’s knowledge- and image-making practices and the institutional and personal networks which shaped his work and his career. By drawing on an assemblage of Royal Geographical Society (RGS) archives and publications the study explores the medium of lantern slides and the slidescapes of Cornish’s lectures at the RGS. It traces how multiple institutional and commercial ‘mindful hands’ shaped the look, content and methods of a diversifying and geographically dispersed community of geographers in the final decades of the nineteenth century as the popularity of both the RGS and the medium of the magic lantern peaked.
Emily Hayes (Wed,) studied this question.