Photography had just taken its first steps and it already began to recognize the world. The visions of faraway lands and other cultures, but also the small things right next door, the things that were going unnoticed by the indifference of the eye, could be collected in easy to make images that let everybody know about an iceberg or a giraffe, an Indian temple or the after-effects of an earthquake.
Jules Verne was no longer content to simply to imagine extraordinary journeys. Encapsulated in the anagram of the name of a guest of the projectile of the "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", he paid tribute to Nadar, the artist who had been cataloguing the world and its inhabitants through the lens of a camera.
Is this continuous but gradual recognition over? No, but if it were, says Luigi Ghirri, the time has come to start over because, as Italo Calvino reminds us, we are increasingly feeling the need to call things by their proper name.