1880s

Vintage: Portraits of Vietnamese People by Émile Gsell (1880s)

22 September 2019 0

Émile Gsell was born in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, Haut-Rhin, France on 31 December 1838. He served in the military from 1858 to 1866, during which time he learned photography and travelled to Cochin China (now Southern Vietnam). In Cochin China, Gsell was hired by the Commission d’exploration du Mékong, directed by Ernest Doudart de Lagrée (b. 1823 – d. 1868), to photograph…

Vintage: Everyday Life of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the 1880s

18 April 2018 0

Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon. At first the area it covered did not include the Kingdom of Kandy, which was a protectorate from 1815, but from 1817 to 1948 the British possessions included the whole island of Ceylon, now the nation of Sri Lanka. via Patrick Montgomery

Vintage: Everyday Life of Cairo in the 19th Century (1860s-1880s)

10 July 2017 0

Under the Ottomans, Cairo expanded south and west from its nucleus around the Citadel. The city was the second-largest in the empire, behind only Constantinople, and, although migration was not the primary source of Cairo’s growth, twenty percent of its population at the end of the 18th century consisted of religious minorities and foreigners from around the Mediterranean. Still, when…

Vintage: Japan in the late XIX Century (Meiji period, 1870s-1880s)

7 May 2017 0

In 1869 The Emperor was restored to nominal supreme power, and the imperial family moved to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo (“eastern capital”). However, the most powerful men in the government were former samurai from Chōshū and Satsuma rather than the Emperor, who was fifteen in 1868. These men, known as the Meiji oligarchs, oversaw the dramatic changes Japan would…

Vintage: Canadian Pacific Railway Locomotives (1880s)

23 March 2017 0

The construction of the national railway by the Canadian Pacific Railway company in the 1880s is inextricably linked with the settlement and development of Western Canada. Glenbow Museum has an extensive collection of more than 6000 railway-related historic photographs, which document the building and operation of the CPR as well as other railways in the West. The locomotives in these…

Vintage: Portraits of the First Nations People by Alex Ross (1880s)

23 February 2017 0

Alex Ross, 1851-1894, came to Calgary, Alberta in 1884 and set up a photographic studio at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Osler Street. He had previously worked for a photographer in Winnipeg, but felt the time was right to strike out on his own and establish his own business. He quickly became well-known for his photographs of the First…

Forgotten Cincinnati: Photographs from the 1880s

7 February 2017 0

In 2013, a private collector rediscovered a trove of large glass-plate negatives. These fragile documents by unidentified photographers constitute a time capsule of late-19th-century Cincinnati. Group portraits reveal the faces of former residents. Street scenes show life in a bustling city and record buildings that no longer exist. Construction views and industrial interiors portray Cincinnati as a developing modern metropolis.…

Late 19th century Victorian Era Cabinet Cards (1880s to 1890s)

2 November 2016 0

Historic Victorian Era Cabinet Cards (1870s to 1880s) from the collection of John S. Rochon @ flickr. The cabinet card was a style of photograph which was widely used for photographic portraiture after 1870. It consisted of a thin photograph mounted on a card typically measuring 108 by 165 mm.