L: Twin Infants in Coffins, 1886 R: Portrait of Man with Small Beard, 1897
© Charles Van Schaick / WHS
Many of you know that Andy Adams is the editor behind the daily photography blogzine Flak Photo. What many of you might not know, however, is that Andy also has done work for the photographs department of the Wisconsin Historical Society, as a staff member in their digital lab. There he worked to make high resolution scans of vintage photographic negatives and prints from the collections and process the files for digital and print output.
Andy e-mailed me to let me know that the WHS has been putting scans of these old negatives and prints up on Flickr.
One of the sets that’s particularly special to see is the set of Wisconsin Death Trip images. It includes a selection of photographs produced by Charles Van Schaick between 1890 and 1910 that were later used in the book by Michael Lesy (1973). The entirety of the Charles Van Schaick collection (around 5,600 glass plates) is housed in the archives of the WHS.
The WHS is currently in the process of mounting the entire collection on their website. See the Van Schaick images there or, as mentioned, visit the Flickr set for a smaller selection. There really are too many stunning images to count.
Thank you for passing this on, Andy.
2 Comments
January 24, 2008 – 11:23 pm
There’s is a documentary version of this work too. Coming from Wisconsin, I found this stuff very interesting.
August 13, 2009 – 3:29 pm
hi, i was wondering if you perhaps knew if Charles Van Schaick is of dutch origin. im really curious to know as i just stumbled across ‘wisconsin death trip’ as a perfect gift to my best friend who is from wisconsin and just like me loves the 1800′s in literature and art as well as photography and it would just be really nice to know if Charles van Schaick is of dutch origin, as i am dutch and it would only make the value of the gift much greater. i have no idea if you’d know this, and if not im truly sorry for bothering you with the question, there’s just almost nothing to find online. thank you for your time, kim