Here is a photochrom image from right around 1900 of the majestic Yosemite Valley. This was the first really practical color photo technology, it produced images so real as to almost seem surreal. Here the rocks look hard, the water wet and the tiny opening in the canopy in the middle of the valley looks invitingly fresh, one can almost smell the pine forests and wild grasses.

This public domain photograph is by William Henry Jackson, one of the few historic photographers almost everybody is familiar with. We posted another image by Jackson earlier: Mule in Havana another beautiful photochrom. As we said there, so much has been written about W H Jackson there is little left for us to add, his work speaks for itself.

This dramatic image of Rancho de Taos Mission in New Mexico shows how artistic the black and white photograph can be in the hands of an experienced photographer. The tonal range is excellent with the darkest black shadows on the left, and purest white reflection on the corner toward the right, and every shade of gray in-between.

The photographer for this public domain image was Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), well-known for her anthropologically oriented photographs of the southwestern states and Mexico. It was published/copyrighted in 1930, and the copyright was allowed to lapse when it was up for renewal in 1956, before the copyright law was amended to give longer protection. (Images as late as 1963 may be in the public domain, if they were copyrighted and published, but the copyright was not renewed). Laura Gilpin studied photography at the Clarence H White school in New York city, and published several books of photographs. In one, she wrote:

Many enter the field of photography with the impulse to record a scene. They often fail to realize that what they wish to do is to record the emotion felt upon viewing that scene.

With Christmas just three weeks away I thought we should have a picture evocative of that event. This is a typical mid-eastern couple posing with a donkey in a Joseph and Mary on their way to Bethlehem type of scene. The background has been entirely blacked out — I suspect the photographer intended (and maybe did in other prints) add a background suitable to the scene. In the U.S. photographers used something called ‘Bendann Backgrounds’ to add background scenes to studio images, I’m sure this photographer had something similar, either purchased or that he made himself. To print the background a mask was cut out of black paper in the shape of the subject — both parts of the paper were used in turn, the one shaped like the subject blocked that area while the background was printed, then the outline part was used to block the background while the subject was printed.

This public domain image was made by Tancrède R Dumas (1830-1905) of Beirut, Lebanon. We profiled Dumas on our post about the Snake Charmer. He seems to have opened his Beirut studio in 1866, so this image dates from between 1866 and about 1890. The scene is so generic there are no clues to the date directly from the subject, we have to rely on the known dates of operation for the photographer, and the knowledge that the photograph is an Albumen print.

Here is a dramatic image of an Eskimo man, his face framed by the fur of his parka. A studio portrait, the picture alone gives no clues to the date it was taken. This is the traditional style of winter clothing for Eskimos, used from prehistoric times to the present. There is no background, just a cloudy amorphous blotchiness, that has been used in photography from the 1860s to present.

As it happens, though, this image was published, and the copyright date of the publication was 1926, so it was probably taken that year or within a year or two previously. The image comes from the Cann Studio in Fairbanks, Alaska. That studio was open from the 1920s through at least 1939, and probably later. It was owned by Charles F Cann, a native of Estonia, born 15 May 1885, he died in Fairbanks 14 April 1970.

Oscar Wilde was a flamboyant Irish author and playwright, who was imprisoned in England for two years (May 1895 to May 1897) for “gross indecency” when his homosexual activity was publicized. This is one of several photographs of Oscar Wilde taken by the famous photographer Napoleon Sarony in 1882 when Wilde visited New York. Another image from the same session sparked a lawsuit the following year that rose all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and confirmed the right of photographers to copyright their images. A lithographer used the image of Wilde to make a lithograph, claiming that the picture of Wilde was not a creative work but due to a mere mechanical process. Sarony’s lawyers prevailed, and established a precedent still cited to this day when photographic copyright issues arise.

Sarony was the premiere celebrity photographer in New York in the 1870s and 1880s. Born in Canada about 1821, he was trained as a lithographer, but learned the daguerreotype process in the late 1850s. After his wife died in 1858 he took his children to Europe, and studied art. His brother was running a successful photography business in England, and Napoleon decided to go into that business as well. He returned to New York in 1865 and opened a photographic studio. Napoleon Sarony died November 9th 1896 in New York City.