Photochrom Travel Views

A love of travel inspires so many photos on Flickr that we hope you'll enjoy taking a century-old "grand tour." Our Photochrom Print Collection shows Europe, the Middle East, and Canada as they appeared around 1890-1900. We started at the top of the world with Norway, Sweden, and Denmark in January. We added Scotland to the set in April. We'll add more countries gradually.

To see all 6,500 pictures now, check out the Photochrom Print Collection at the Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp. pgz

What's a photochrom?

Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches. Plenty more info at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/co llection/pgz/process.html.

Like postcards, the photochroms feature subjects that appeal to travelers, including landscapes, architecture, street scenes, and daily life and culture. The prints were sold as souvenirs and often collected in albums or framed for display.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division assembled its collection from two sources that provided prints in mint condition. In 1985, the prints of Europe and the Middle East were purchased from the Galerie Muriset in Switzerland. In 2004, Howard L. Gottlieb generously donated the North American views.

Additional photochroms can be found in the online collections of the Zurich Central Library, www.zb.unizh.ch/ and other archives.

P.S. Language and spelling hazards.
Your addition of current place names is much appreciated! Some locations have changed names or even countries since 1900. And, the titles we had to work with from the photochrom publishers based in Detroit and Zurich tended to be English or German versions of the place names.

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