19th century photographs on display: Egypt, Italy, USA

By Sarah Hepworth on September 7, 2010 • ( 1 )

If you’ve seen our previous blog posts you’ll know that one of our current projects is to digitise significant examples from our 19th century photographic collections. We are putting the images online, along with detailed descriptions. This enables us to increase worldwide access to these wonderful images, while helping to preserve the originals.

Salted paper print c 1850. Dougan 105 item 5

For those of you who can come into the library, there is the opportunity to see some of these originals up close. We have chosen some examples from the digitised albums and these are on display in the Special Collections foyer. Come to Level 12 and take a look. [This post is from September 2010 and this is not our current display.]

Waxed paper negative c 1850. Dougan 105 item 105

This display coincides with our latest collection of digitised photographs appearing online, from Dougan 105. Egypt is the main focus this time although the collection of over 100 salt prints and waxed paper negatives includes a few images of Paris and Rouen, France. The images of Egypt appear to date from shortly after 1850, which make them exceptionally early in the photography of that country.