The Artificial Volcanoes

At universal exhibitions, volcanic eruption becomes a staging act: steam, red light, pyrotechnics. One no longer merely shows nature—one reproduces it at will, programmed like an industrial spectacle.

The image is not a photograph of the spectacle: it's a monument project submitted in 1894 by A. Jodice for the Paris Exhibition, preserved at the BnF. This colossal erupting crater translates the decorative ambition of the era—to remake in plaster and engineering the most formidable landscapes, even when the project will never be built.

What was indeed realized is an aquatic version. The Paris Aquarium, designed by the Guillaume brothers between the Pont de l'Alma and the Invalides, offered an "underwater world" where one of the basins simulated an underwater eruption: a powerful aerator raised a column of bubbles lit in deep red, in a basalt setting. Divers and "mermaids" performed scenes inspired by Jules Verne—the spectacle counted as much as zoology.

The most famous example is earlier: at the Midway of the Chicago Exhibition (1893), the Kilauea cyclorama enveloped the public in a circular painting over 120 meters long, then triggered false flames, steam, and electrical detonations. Everywhere, the same idea: to domesticate natural catastrophe as urban attraction, as proof that modern technique can now repeat—and replace—the forces it claims to admire.