Lantern Slide

Lantern slides, which allowed the image on a glass plate to be projected with light onto a wall or screen, represent one way that knowledge circulated through photographs. Though lantern slides with painted imagery have a long history that predates the discovery of photography, travelling lectures based on photographic lantern slides became increasingly commonplace in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Lantern slides would eventually be supplanted by film slides.

This hand-coloured slide is made from a photograph taken by Western Canadian journalist Miriam Green Ellis. The cracks that mark the surface of the glass plate call attention to the fragility of lantern slides. Bruce Peel Special Collections houses the Miriam Green Ellis archive, which is featured in the online exhibition Miriam Green Ellis: Western Canadian Journalist.