Picturing construction. Photographical documentation of Belgian construction sites by late nineteenth and early twentieth-century contractors

Recently, architectural and urban historians addressed in various ways the use and abuse of photographs within architectural discourses and studied how the new nineteenth-century medium of photography not only documented, but also imagined and represented architectural and urban realisations and their histories (Arnold 2002, Böröcz 2008, Peleman 2012, Van Goethem 1999). Yet, the analysis of this set of valuable images leaves many construction historians hungry after all (Bertels 2008).
Indeed, most of the nineteenth-century known architectural photography depict buildings in their completed status, at the time of inauguration or shortly after their occupation. Construction, maintenance or restoration works were most often accidentally pictured as for many late-nineteenth-century photographers ‘men at work’ posed important technical problems (need for long exposure times). Also more artistic arguments played a role due to the dominance of portrait photography and of course most clients and architects were just interested in the final masterpiece. It makes that nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century photographic reportages or close-ups of the construction process are rather rare, but simultaneously highly valuable to understand ephemeral construction processes and techniques.
This paper proposes to analyse a series of recently discovered late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographical reportages collected or ordered by construction contractors in the period 1880-1930 picturing their Belgian constructed oeuvre. The paper will not only analyse the content of the reportages, but also why, how and when these images were used. As such this contribution will also shed light on how contractors used contemporary photos to construct their proper imaging and history. As such this contribution will also shed light on how contractors used contemporary photos to construct their proper imaging and history.