Charles Van Schaick: Wisconsin Death Trip

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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.

  1. shanelavalette posted this