Rare color images from 1899 offer glimpse into a lost North Africa | CNN

courtesy Library of Congress

The harbor and admiralty, Algiers, Algeria. The printing process of photochroms was efficient and could produce hundreds of thousands of copies from a single negative. A 7x9 inch photochrom cost approximately 35 cents at the turn of the 20th century.

courtesy Library of Congress

Men leaving a mosque in Tunis, Tunisia circa 1899. Captured using a photolithography method known as a photochrom, it was an early way to create color stills from a camera.

courtesy Library of Congress

A crowd surrounds a snake charmer in Tunis. Photochroms were created by taking the negative and exposing it to multiple flat surfaces such as stone, glass or zinc. As many as 24 separate slides would we be used, each printing a different color. Together the inks would blend and create realistic hues. (Find out more about the process here.)

courtesy Library of Congress

Resting Bedouins at the Grand Pyramid, Cairo, Egypt. Helena Zinkham of the Library of Congress, where these rare photochroms are kept, says the main market for these high quality images was European tourists.

courtesy Library of Congress

Bridge in Constantine, Algeria. The photochrom process, invented 1890, was soon patented by companies around Europe and the US. It's thought most of the photochroms from this period in North Africa were taken by Europeans, although many authors are unknown today.

courtesy Library of Congress

The label on this photochrom describes the subjects as "Distinguished Moorish women" in Algiers. Who does and doesn't appear in these images is an important discussion point, says Charlotte Chopin, expert on colonial Algeria.

courtesy Library of Congress

The cathedral, Carthage, Tunisia. Swathes of North Africa were under colonial occupation during the late 19th and early 20th century, with France and Britain holding sway over much of the region.

courtesy Library of Congress

A mosque in, Kairwan, Tunisia. Chopin says that the photochroms show a tale of two cities, with indigenous and colonial classes rarely meeting.

courtesy Library of Congress

View from Paris Hotel, Tunis. Architecture and indigenous people were both thrown into relief with the newly constructed European enclaves popping up across North Africa

courtesy Library of Congress

The Souc-el-Trouk, Tunis. Together, these images amount largely to an Orientalized, exotic version of North Africa appealing to tourists and travelers.

courtesy Library of Congress

Of course Europeans and Arab communities did interact, and were not always in friction. Madame Luce's School of Arab Embroidery in Algiers taught local Muslim girls. Frenchwoman Luce and her granddaughters "were very interested in preserving the traditional Algerian embroidery, which had been disrupted by the French occupation," says Arden Alexander of the Library of Congress.

courtesy Library of Congress

The photographers behind the images of Luce's school were identified by academic Rebecca Rogers as Jan Geiser and Arnold Vollenweider, two Swiss men. They publicized the school, which already had famous visitors including the Queen of Portugal.

courtesy Library of Congress

The Palace of Justice, Tangier, Morocco. Although not yet a colony at the time in which this photocrhom was taken, Morocco was nonetheless heavily influenced by Europeans, France and Spain later enforcing a protectorate.

courtesy Library of Congress

The great mosque in Algiers. Chopin says the peace and stillness of many of the photochroms belies much of the violence of colonial rule, providing the consumer with a romanticized perspective.

courtesy Library of Congress

Sailboat on the River Nile, Cairo, Egypt. The era of the photochrom coincided with an era of great expansion within the travel industry. It became easier to cross oceans and tour other continents, and Europeans often visited North Africa to escape the pollution of cities across the Mediterranean Sea.

courtesy Library of Congress

Woman and child on the terrace, Algiers. Despite depicting local people in their own environments, the colonial eye keeps "control of the frame," says Chopin.

courtesy Library of Congress

Arab juggler, Algiers. The era of the photochrom in Europe was over by the end of the First World War, as technology and commerce were both heavily disrupted. Cameras had advanced and public ownership had increased. Meanwhile some North African nations were beginning their journeys away from colonialism toward independence. These photochroms were already relics of a past epoch.

CNN —

The images look decades ahead of their time: color stills of 19th century scenes, sharp and beautifully rendered in earthy shades evoking the dry heat of their setting, North Africa. Not paintings, but not photographs like you and I know them today. Something in between and a treat for the eyes.

Men huddle around a snake charmer while women congregate in the shade nearby. Across sprawling cities minarets push up into the sky, alongside colonial ports replete with rococo arches and neo-classical columns. Muslims in traditional robes and Christians in European livery walk streets apart, but never appear to meet. They represent a tale of two cities, colonizer’s and subject’s, depicted in carefully constructed peace.

These extraordinary images, living deep within the archives of the Library of Congress, capture a fleeting moment in history on the cusp of the 20th century. Dated from approximately 1899, their authors are largely unknown, while the technique behind them has long gone out of practice.

Called photochroms, a form of photolithography, these high end portraits of life in colonial North Africa are a time travel tour through a forgotten era; rich with politicking and not always the innocent postcards they may seem. So what secrets and hidden insights do they contain?

The origins of the photochrom

View this interactive content on CNN.com

The 19th century marked a period of unparalleled growth in industry, engineering and empire. The world had opened up: travel became easier as liners crossed oceans in record speeds and the proliferation of railway lines prompted Great Britain, the home of GMT, to rethink time itself.

For the privileged few, horizons were expanded. A colonial class settled into enclaves from Agra to Algiers, while European tourists wishing to venture beyond the continent had never had it so easy. Exoticism was sought and found, with other cultures recorded and represented – though not necessarily understood.

By the end of the century Europeans were setting up cameras all across North Africa, capturing scenes from an array of colonial cities. Egypt was a British protectorate, Algeria a French colony; Tunisia a French protectorate while Morocco, not yet a Spanish and French protectorate, nonetheless had a heavy European presence. Libya, meanwhile, was not yet unified and part of the Ottoman Empire.

View this interactive content on CNN.com

The photochrom, developed in Switzerland, 1890 after 10 years of research, was a breakthrough in photography, says Helena Zinkham, chief of the prints and photographs division at the Library of Congress.

“A lot of people think all old photos were black and white and brown,” she says, “but in fact the drive to introduce color into photography was almost from the start the invention.”

To make a photochrom “you take the negative from the camera and expose it on to stone or zinc – a very flat surface,” Zinkham explains.

Before exposing, a coating of light-sensitive chemicals is applied to the flat plate, which hardens in accordance with the light filtered through the negative, creating a print. Different exposure durations would transfer different shades of the monochrome negative, meaning up to 24 separate plates could be made, each representing a different color.

The photographer would create extensive notes so the photochrom printer could then ascribe different colors to different plates. Printed on top of another, ink would bleed and create shading and photorealistic results.

“By switching out to the lithography process you could print hundreds of thousands of copies,” Zinkham says. High quality and cost effective, these professional images soon circulated around the world, with companies in London and the US licensing the patented process.

Antique art or propaganda pieces?

Charlotte Chopin, lecturer in French studies at the University of London Institute in Paris, describes the prints as “part of the European capitalist economy of mass cultural production that is geared towards European clientele.” Indeed, while many of the images portray indigenous people, Chopin, a specialist in colonial Algeria, says she’s seen no evidence that photochroms were circulated among indigenous communities.

View this interactive content on CNN.com

The photochrom became a shop window for the European traveler: a sailing trip down the Nile, a visit to the souks, while selling the achievements of the colonial model.

“[They] contrast the European imprint of the city with the indigenous people… something that would probably appeal to tourists, to see the contrast with European architecture and the streets where the indigenous people were living,” says Arden Alexander, cataloger specialist at the Library of Congress.

Indigenous people became an attraction in and of themselves – but also served a political purpose.

“I think some of [the photochroms] look very much Orientalist,” argues Chopin. “Orientalism was absolutely crucial to power structures of colonial rule, because it was about stereotypes that portrayed North African peoples in a particular way, either as indolent, mysterious or dangerous – or irrational.” These stereotypes could then be used to legitimize colonial domination, the lecturer says.

View this interactive content on CNN.com

“Moorish women” and an “Arab juggler” are pictured and annotated by photographers, but denied a voice. The colonial eye keeps “control of the frame,” argues Chopin, saying the photochroms omit evidence of the many forms of violence exacted by colonial powers on indigenous populations to maintain authority.

“The images are really romanticized… it looks peaceful,” she says, “people looking happy and tranquil. I don’t think that’s at all accurate for anyone really living in North Africa.”

But Chopin also argues that there could be a subversive element to their exotic, Orientalized images.

“One of the things other scholars talk about is performance: performing the perceptions that Europeans have of Algerians and Tunisians in order to, behind the scenes, carry on and protect your own culture… because on the surface you’re performing the culture you want to see,” she says.

End of an era

View this interactive content on CNN.com

The First World War brought a curtain down on this era of photography. By the time peace treaties were signed camera technology had moved on, and tourists were more likely to take their own pictures, rather than purchase a photochrom. The cultural landscape in North Africa had changed too, as populations found their voices and sought reforms from their colonial masters.

These images, nostalgic but containing a rich, and sometimes dark subtext, were now objects of a past epoch.

Today photochroms are collector’s items, and held in museums and libraries. But with the digitization of archives, some collections are finding a new lease of life online.

Frozen in time, but under an ongoing process of reassessment and revaluation, the photochrom continues to beguile, even now.