Browse Items (1404 total)

This unique album from 1894 acts as an aide memoire, with the photographs as well as the pressed plants and flowers providing an indexical link to the places represented. The gelatin dry plate process rendered photography more accessible in the…

“Postal Souvenirs” provides an example of what the faster exposures of the gelatin process could achieve. Here, a trip to a rodeo provided an opportunity to capture the sense of movement that eluded earlier nineteenth-century photographers. The…

Stereoscope technology was developed to experiment with binocular vision, and later became a popular tool for both entertainment and instruction. Stereographs seen through the stereoscope offered such a convincing illusion of three-dimensional…

This album of photographic postcards includes examples of the cyanotype process, which was a relatively simple and low-cost process frequently used for family snapshots, contact prints, and blueprints. The cyanotype process remained consistent from…

Tintypes were made possible with the introduction of wet collodion. In the case of the tintype, the exposure is made on a thin sheet of metal with the result that the tones are reversed to create a positive image. Like the daguerreotype, the…

The Changing of the Guard: Graphic Incidents of the Two World Wars provides examples of photojournalism created by “official and other photographers” and collected into a commemorative album published in Australia. Some of the action shots…

This album documents an annual inspection trip from Montreal to Victoria taken by the CPR’s chairman, president, and directors. It provides another example of the ways photography circulated knowledge about places, contributing to Canada's…

This album of portraits features actresses, singers, and dancers, demonstrating the growing popularity of celebrity photographs. Emerging technologies and formats such as the wet collodion process and the carte-de-visite format made mass reproduction…

This portrait of a baseball player from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, reminds us of the continued value of professional photography in the Kodak era. This portrait came with a special frame that protected the picture when it was tucked away and folded…

This album, with its Art Nouveau cover design and faded photographs, was created during World War I. Given the presence of men in uniform on the album's pages, it is likely that the album belonged to a soldier. The album's casual snapshots suggest…