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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

These photos are of stunning quality. I'm not sure I've seen any 19th century photos that come close, even with retouching and postprocessing. But also the lighting is incredible. Like it looks more like something associated with a more modern (ie post-WWII) technique.

I didn't see any mention of the provenance of these photos. Anyone know?

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Lighting: No problem! We're talking the Sahara.

Lots of light, in the Sahara.

With all that light, they didn't need a flash, and the shutter could be fairly fast.

I am pretty sure they are real, but the dates given are kind of unverifiable, by looking. The Bedouin still pretty much look like that, today, but you might see the occasional watch, and probably more shoes, these days.

I'm pretty sure most of these photos were take in Arabia and not the Sahara. Some of them are clearly in Palestine and Jordan. Arabia is also mostly bright desert so the point stands.

I lived in Morocco, so my experience is with the Berber and Touareg.

Seconded. They are stunning photos if genuine.

Any reason why you think they might not be?

On a side note, other than the deception, if these are "fake" current photos that's still be interesting.

These are crazy high quality it makes it reallyy questionable. I just looked up photos from 1900 on getty images and there's a graininess to them and a distinct quality to them. But I'm no photograph expert.

The photographic technique matters for image quality. You may have been looking at autochrome prints which used potato starch grains and typically had a long exposure time and a bit of a pointillist effect. For reference here is a collection of 110 year old autochromes of Paris:

https://www.thephoblographer.com/2013/01/31/behold-the-magni...

In contrast the 120 year old three channel photos of Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky from Tsarist Russia look like they were taken yesterday. https://www.loc.gov/collections/prokudin-gorskii/about-this-...

some of these photos look like they were taken with a field camera on plates, a technique that can achieve higher resolution than modern consumer digital cameras. you may be looking at some smaller format for your examples.

most people have never seen a real photography exhibition and don't realize the extreme detail and depth that can be achieved with analog photography, and has been possible for over a hundred years. consumer cameras are oriented to convenience, but film is so much more powerful than the toy cameras you might remember from when you were a kid.

In my family we had a book made at an unusual, large, awkward size. The book was essentially a photo album and the pages essentially contact prints from large glass plates. The subject was the construction of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads to form the first transcontinental railroad in the US. In one picture, a very large wooden trestle bridge had just been completed, and the builders were all over it, if you could find them. The exposure time was long enough to turn the rapids of the river below feathery.

The photographer kept the camera and his supplies in a horse-drawn wagon, which was also the darkroom.

The photos could simply be misattributed in terms of date (Bedouins in various places had this sort of lifestyle well into the 20th century, AIUI).

Maybe someone who knows more about historical firearms than me can confirm whether the guns and ammo belts (which are the most visible bits of industrial technology) in the photos are viable for late 19th C.

Let's take a closer look at the photos with annotations.

"American colony, Jerusalem"

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-63S7WQRnp8k/XqHIqQjNkZI/AAAAAAAAW...

The "American colony, Jerusalem" only existed from 1881-late 1940s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colony,_Jerusalem

60. Bedouin mother and baby

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FlxLhh3aAJI/XqHInAmrTcI/AAAAAAAAW...

From the side of the picture, it looks like it's on film. Was it possible to have a film camera in 1889? Yes, barely.

"The use of photographic film was pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to celluloid in 1889. His first camera, which he called the "Kodak," was first offered for sale in 1888."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_camera#Early_ph...

109. Bedouin sweethearts

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gdxkp8n0lnc/XqHI34__C_I/AAAAAAAAW...

The number 109 (sweethearts) is much higher than 60 (mother and child). That implies that there were many more worse photos that were not selected for uploading.

Far more recently, in 1937, my grandpa went on a cycling trip through Germany, Austria, and Italy, then back to the UK. My mum made a photo website about it, including links to some hotels that are still operating.

http://drmarionb.free.fr/1937CyclingTour/

He had been inspired by another book, Blue Skies and Good Companions. There's an archive of that available:

https://wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/cycling/id...

My mum then wrote an article about it for the CTC cycling magazine in the UK, and it was published in the Feb/Mar 2021 issue, page 47-49. (paywall, free registration required to view)

https://www.cyclinguk.org/publication/cycle-magazine-februar...

Some of these photos look amazing when colourised using DeOldify, via MyHeritage.

> I didn't see any mention of the provenance of these photos. Anyone know?

these photos are genuine — they come directly from the

- Library of Congress Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection [0]

- Library of Congress American Colony (Jerusalem). Photo Department [1]

- New York State Education Deparment Instructional lantern slides [2][3][4]

> These photos are of stunning quality. I'm not sure I've seen any 19th century photos that come close, even with retouching and postprocessing.

While lensmaking has become more industrialized and specialized, raw photographic technology has not advanced much over the past ~100 years.

This goes viral on reddit every so often, so I assume most are already familiar, but I recommend looking through the Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky[5] collection[6] on the LOC for examples of medium to large format color photography from 1905-1915, for example. Gorsky's field work of Tsarist Russia (with what was most likely some version of the Miethe Dreifarben-Kamera[7][8][9], given the rectangular shape of the glass negatives) is stunning.

[0]: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?sp=1&co=matpc&st=galler...

[1]: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/related/?va=exact&st=gallery&q=...

[2]: http://www.archives.nysed.gov/education/lesson-topic-syria

[3]: https://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Brow...

[4]: https://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Deta...

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky

[6]: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?co=prok&st=gallery

[7]: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html

[8]: http://www.dreifarbenfotografie.de/kamera.htm

[9]: http://www.vintagephoto.tv/mb.shtml

"between 1898 and 1946"

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/item/201969826...

"The American Colony and the Matson Photo Service"

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html

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