The Library’s Prints and Photographs Division has added 116 photocrom travel views of the Netherlands from 100 years ago to our Flickr page, bringing the total number of photochroms on Flickr to 773.
Photochroms, published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, are prints that were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches. You can learn more about them here.
The Library is looking toward the power of crowd-sourcing to help enhance our records about these images:
“Your addition of current place names is much appreciated! Some locations have changed names or even countries since 1900. And, the titles we had to work with from the photochrom publishers based in Detroit and Zurich tended to be English or German versions of the place names.”
(The included image, “Native girls, Marken Island, Holland,” from the Library’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and also online at Flickr.)
November 21, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I did not know that this method of capturing photo’s even existed. I am just in the process of taking a digital photography class, and because of that, trying to learn more about photography in general.
I think this process is not all that dissimilar to what we can do today, by combining digital photos with computerized tools such as Photoshop…
I enjoyed the pictures and the glimpse it gives into not only the past, but the culture in other countries…
February 21, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Incredible!