American William Henry Jackson was an well known photographer. He was the official photographer for the United States Geological and Geological Survey of the Territories from 1870 to 1878. In addition, he had his own studios before and after his work with the US government, as well as working with several railroads.
In 1897, William A. Livingstone, Jr., one of the founders of the Detroit Photographic Company, persuaded the William Henry Jackson to join the firm. By doing so, the Detroit Photographic Company added thousands of negatives produced by Jackson to the company’s image inventory. Jackson's photographs included city and town views, images of important buildings, scenes along railroad lines, and views of hotels and resorts from all over the world, including North and South America and Europe.
In the 1890s, the Detroit Photographic Company purchased the rights to use the Swiss "Photochrom" process of converting black-and-white photographs into color images, printing them by photolithography. This process allowed large scale production of color postcards, albums, and photographic prints for sale to the general American public, including those images taken by Jackson.
Included here are chromolithographs held at St. Cloud State that are not available at the Library of Congress. To access those images available at the Library of Congress, check out their chromolithograph search page.
This material is part of the Collection of William Henry Jackson Chromolithographs in University Archives.
Visit the University Archives for more information.
