At the turn of the twentieth century, photographic technology and an American culture of optimism and self-celebration combined to create what Luc Sante calls the "strange and compelling medium" of panoramic group photography. Organizations famed and obscure—from the Anti-Saloon League of America and the troops at Camp Sevier during the Great War to the members of the Midget Swing Review—commissioned photographers to produce images that sometimes encompassed a full 360 degrees. No public event—a circus, a train wreck, or the Army-Navy football game—was too grand or eccentric to deserve its own wide-angle commemoration. The photographs compose a portrait of a society on the cusp of sweeping change, as their details preserve the enduring humanity of their subjects: a bathing beauty tosses her curls; a group of cross-dressing women smile enigmatically at an off-camera friend; children at play on a summertime lawn appear only as blurs behind an Ohio town meeting. The Big Picture gathers...
