Golgotha and the Crucifixion, from the series "The Chicago Panorama of The Crucifixion"
Medium
Albumen print, stereo
Dimensions
Each image: 10 × 7.5 cm (3 15/16 × 3 in.); Card: 10.7 × 17.7 cm (4 1/4 × 7 in.)
Classification
photography
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
197747
Art Historical Context
Henry Hamilton Bennett’s *Golgotha and the Crucifixion* (1893) is a stereoscopic albumen print that captures a dramatic religious panorama exhibited during Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition. Bennett, renowned for his innovative landscape photography in the American Midwest, here turned his camera toward a monumental painted or sculpted scene of Christ’s crucifixion. The stereo format—two nearly identical images mounted side by side—allowed viewers to experience the composition in three dimensions when seen through a stereoscope, a popular parlor entertainment of the era. The work belongs...
About the Artist
Henry Hamilton Bennett · 1843–1908
Henry Hamilton Bennett (1843–1908) was a pioneering American photographer whose breathtaking images of the Wisconsin Dells transformed a rugged river gorge into one of the nation's premier tourist destinations. Born in Farnham, Quebec, Canada, on January 15, 1843, Bennett moved with his family to Brattleboro, Vermont, before settling in Kilbourn City (now Wisconsin Dells), Wisconsin, in 1857 at ag...