Rudolf (von) Alt painted people, landscapes, villages and towns in the countries of the Habsburg monarchy as well as in Crimea, Italy and Germany. In his pictures, he also documented the emergence of Vienna as a cosmopolitan city between the 1820s and the beginning of the 20th century. Stefan Oláh photographs architecture and living and cultural environments from the Himalayas to Brazil - and in Vienna. In this publication, paintings by Rudolf (von) Alt are juxtaposed with photographs by Stefan Oláh. The artists positions - and their lines of sight - are almost identical. Their motifs are similar - or not. The historian Leonhard Weidinger introduces the pairs of images with richly informative texts about the buildings, their history and their surroundings.

Leonhard Weidinger, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, (MAK), Institute for Contemporary History, University of Vienna