The topic is by no means new, but certainly interesting.
The bottom line is that in the numerous photographs of the cities of the late 19th century, there are either no people at all, or very few people. It seems that everyone was removed from the filming location. Cities small and large, megalopolises are all the same: we cannot see the crowds of people we are used to.
Paris, mid-19th century.
Think of any of the documentaries or (even) feature films, where the action takes place within the city … there are crowds of people roaming there!
Nevsky Prospect - something like that, approximately.
And in these photos - no one (or almost no one). Where did the people go? They couldn't be removed from the filming location on purpose, and why? Filmed early in the morning? No, judging by the illumination and shadows (amateur observation) - it's the height of daylight there.
Penza.
All this gave rise to the development of conspiracy theories about a catastrophe (of various kinds and nature) and mass death of the population.
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The most popular technological explanation is long exposure when photographing. The first photograph, "View from the Window" in 1826, required as much as 8 hours exposure. But progress moved quickly …
Palace Square 1896.
In 1895 (a year before the one shown in the photo above), the Lumière brothers had already shown the film. And the exposure allowed me to capture and show people in motion. Therefore, the argument that it was necessary to stand still for 30 minutes in one place no longer works. However, in the main square of St. Petersburg, there are still very few passers-by!
Our time is also not crowded with people..
To which the skeptics answer: well, people don't always crowd! And they cite as arguments, modern photos, which are also not crowded with people. In addition, there are a lot of pictures of approximately the same period in which people are. What's the matter?
Irkutsk, 19th century.
The explanation is most likely in the shooting technique. If it was necessary to shoot stationary objects with high quality, one lens was used (and then the image of moving objects was either not fixed at all, or was fixed as blurred silhouettes). If a
it was necessary to shoot dynamic objects, with some loss of quality - we used a two-lens method of shooting. So it turned out that in some pictures, there are no people in the frame, but in others there are.
In any case, on the forums everyone continues to argue about this and give various arguments in favor of their versions … What do you think about this?