Reflections on Photochroms

The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress include thousands of photochroms. These early color prints were photomechanically reproduced so they weren’t photographs in the traditional sense. I spent some time looking through the photochroms, most of which date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while working on a Flickr album of images of mirrors and reflections. Neither a color photograph nor a hand colored image, a photochrom was made by combining the photographic process with the lithographic process. A black-and-white negative was transferred to a lithographic stone or plate. Each color of the photochrom required a separate stone. If the photochrom included four colors, four stones were needed to make the finished…

New Year, New to See

The following is a guest post by Hanna Soltys, Reference Librarian, with contributions by Sara W. Duke, Curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Arts, and Micah Messenheimer, Curator of Photography, all of the Prints and Photographs Division. To kick off the New Year, the Prints & Photographs Virtual Orientations for January 2022 look at newly processed, acquired, and/or digitized collections. While we often discuss and share new collections and acquisitions, this orientation will also highlight resources such as finding aids to help with research projects. One of the newly processed collections you can expect to learn about is the William Kennoch Collection. This collection includes over 1,200 photographs from the U.S. Secret Service of counterfeiters, criminals, and others accused of…