Unique hand-painted photos from the 1890s

Photochromes are bright, hand-made color images based on black-and-white negatives. Photochromes appear as a result of a process that peaked in popularity in the 1890s. In the unique color frames, slightly reminiscent of watercolor sketches due to the unnatural colors, you can see the world as it was 137 years ago, when color photography itself was in its infancy.

Photochrome as a method consisted in creating color images based on colored photonegatives by direct transfer to lithographic printing plates. The inventor of the method was the Swedish chemist Hans Jakob Schmidt. After the First World War, which put an end to the craze for photochromic postcards, this technology was used only for posters and reproductions. The last photochrome-based printer was discontinued in 1970.

Algerian women at home, 1899.

Ribeira Square in the Portuguese city of Porto, circa 1903.

Lauterbrunnen and the Staubbach Waterfall, Switzerland, circa 1900s.

Al-Zaytoun Mosque in Tunis, 1896.

Rhenish Waterfall, Switzerland, circa 1890.

Farmers of Guria, Georgia, 1904.

Disembarkation of passengers off the coast of Algiers, 1896.

Street food in Naples, Italy, 1899.

Munot Fortress in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 1893.

Camel drivers heading into the desert, 1895.

Men smoke a hookah at the entrance to a coffee shop, Istanbul, 1897.

An alley in the Old Town of Biskra, Algeria, 1900.

Young milk merchants with a cart pulled by a dog.

An elderly Irish woman with a spinning wheel, County Galway, Ireland, 1890s.

Entrance to Fingal's sea cave at low tide, 1900.

The ruins of the castle of Arc near the French city of Dieppe, 1895.