Rediscovered: The first color photographs of The New World

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Rockies to the Tropic of Cancer, the North American landscape is as diverse as it is immense. Lakes as great as seas, forests towering to the sky, windswept plains, sweltering deserts, tumbling waterfalls, marshy swamps, rushing rivers, a legendary canyon… the list of the continent’s natural features inspires both wonder and awe.

This collection of photochroms and Phostint postcards from the private collection of Marc Walter was produced—in color—by the Detroit Photographic Company between 1888 and 1924. It shows North America’s vast and varied landscape in all its splendor, as well as its peoples, from Native Americans and African Americans to immigrants and the last cowboys or gold rushers. Legendary locales such as Far West saloons, New York’s and San Francisco’s Chinatowns, Coney Island, and Atlantic City complete the panorama of a century ago.

Using a photolithographic process that predated the autochrome by nearly 20 years, these images offered people their first glimpses of color photographs. Imbued with a sense of discovery and adventure, they offer an extraordinary voyage through the America of our past.