Browse Items (102 total)

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…

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…

Around the same time as photography’s discovery, George Baxter developed a process of colour printing known as chromolithography, which he patented in 1835. The portraits of the Emperor and Princess of Prussia seen here employ that process in order…

George Baxter’s Pictorial Album; or, Cabinet of Paintings provides an example of how art reproductions circulated before the discovery of photography. Like the portraits of the Emperor and Princess of Prussia, these reproductions are made with…

The Art of Swimming was published before the discovery of photography and includes engravings as a means of circulating knowledge. As explained by the subtitle, the book contains "forty proper copper-plate cuts, which represent the different postures…

The twenty-eight volumes of the Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une societé de gens de lettres(also known as the Encyclopédie) was originally published in Paris between 1751 and 1772. The edition of the…

Hoofs, Claws and Antlers of the Rocky Mountains by the Camera documents a trip through the Rocky Mountains, with an emphasis on the animals encountered (and hunted) along the way. The publication provides a good example of an early use of the…

The practice known as spirit photography pushes the limits of what we consider photographic by seeking to represent the spiritual, rather than the physical and visible, on the photographic plate. The practice of spirit photography also points towards…

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…

Kodachrome was one of the first widely-used colour films, introduced by the Eastman Kodak Company in 1935. Here, Kodachrome film was used to create colourful pictures of the Canadian Rockies. Printed as postcards, the pictures were sold as souvenirs…