Browse Items (102 total)

These "real photographs" of Melrose Abbey in Scotland were issued by the Ancient Monuments Department, suggesting that the photographs were not only created as souvenirs for visitors, but that they also played a role in the documentation and…

Miniatures: Portage La Prairie folds into a rectangular object that can be held in the palm of one's hand, but as our photographs show, it folds out to reveal a series of views of this Manitoba town. The photographs are set within elegant oval frames…

Miscellaneous Objects as Seen With and Without the Microscope predates the introduction of photography. The visual notes it contains depend entirely on the artist's ability to not only record their observations, but to also remember what was seen…

This group portrait of a graduating class in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, brings together 49 individual portraits, mostly sharing the same oval shape and similar poses, facing forward or turned slightly to the side. The similarities between them, and…

William Gilpin’s Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty instructed readers in how to enjoy the landscapes of England’s Lake District, and was illustrated with aquatints (a type of etching) based on Gilpin's drawings. Gilpin…

This pamphlet for Otis dump cars provides an example of the promotional uses of photography in the early-twentieth century. It also calls to mind some of the more mundane uses of photography, which were taken up and parodied by conceptual artists in…

These photographs of Palmyra, Syria, are printed as glossy silver gelatin prints and were likely taken with a hand-held camera and celluloid film. Despite this use of twentieth-century technologies, the photographs follow a tradition of travel…

This panoramic photograph was created from three different prints, as we can see from the seams between the photographs.For another example of a panoramic photographic, see the group portrait of plumbers and steamfitters.This album is part of…

Papillons Européens: Nocturnes, Crépusculaires, et Diurnes demonstrates a method of recording specimens that predates photography: the nature print. With a nature print, the specimen itself is used to make an impression so that, as with…

This series of postcards from the collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague provides a striking example of the transition from Pictorialism towards straight photography among twentieth-century photographers. The postcards were issued in…