In around 1861 the photographer Félix Nadar descended into the Paris catacombs and sewers to make photographs in total darkness. Light was the main obstacle, so he used a series of Bunsen batteries, chemical cells of metal and acid, to generate enough electric light for exposures. Bunsen cells had only been invented in the 1840s, and Nadar had first tested the lighting in his Paris studio, where the glow drew crowds. Burial in Paris had become a crisis: the Cimetière des Innocents was overflowing, and a 1780 collapse had thrown corpses into a cellar. The city moved bones into former limestone quarries, creating the catacombs. Nadar's images helped make these underground spaces a popular destination for middle-class visitors, and by 1867 the city offered public tours of the underground.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.