Carlo Ponti

Carlo Ponti (–1893) was a Swiss-born optician and photographer active in Venice from about 1848. Early life Carlo Ponti was born in Sagno in Canton Ticino, Switzerland between 1822 and 1824. He moved as an adult to Paris to train for about five years in the workshop of optician Robert-Aglaé Cauchoix,before settling in Venice after 1848. Career Ponti opened an optician’s shop in Piazza San Marco 52, near the Caffè Florian, producing high quality instruments, for which he had sole rights, for astronomy and physics and photographic lenses, especially those used for panoramas, as well as selling products of other companies. On 30 May 1854 he was awarded a silver medal for his photographic equipment at the Esposizione Industriale Veneta. As a photographer and editor Ponti published photographic prints, both his own and others, building an international clientele. From this time he systematically photographed Venice and by 1855 had a catalogue of 160 photographic views of Venetian architecture (Guida fotografica illustrata della città di Venezia), each captioned with historical and aesthetic information, supported by an introductory history of Venetian architecture, which was awarded at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855. He published and distributed postcards, stereographs and travel photographs of Venice and its art and architecture on an industrial scale, issuing thousands of prints a month made by hundreds of employees. Tourists' collections of such photographic spolia were preserved in their own photographic albums, and such distribution popularised classical and Italian Renaissance and Baroque art.