Variations on Vienna, or: Habsburg Stereotypes in Transitory Spaces
(a short photo essay)

The editors

Ghosts continue to stalk Europe, and lately there have even been Central European ones out and about. Images from the restless Austro-Hungarian Empire that have popped up lately in touristy urban locations both in and well beyond Central Europe have been captured digitally and reproduced here, not in order to enact any kind of exorcism – that would be hoping too much and we leave slaying to Buffy – but as a kind of roll-call. As these photos reveal, the pressures of the tourist gaze have crystallized a set of mythologized slivers out of the Habsburg past, a cast of instantly recognizable characters and images, a.k.a. the usual suspects. Click on the following to see:

3D_Klimt	Bite off a Piece of Franz_Jo	Sisi and Franz
Going Global: Sissi in Madeira	The Choir Boys Do Hong Kong

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