Detroit Photographic Co.
active Detroit, 1897 - 1924
The Detroit Photographic Company was launched as a photographic publishing firm in the late 1890s by Detroit businessman and publisher William A. Livingstone, Jr., and photographer and photo-publisher Edwin H. Husher. They obtained the exclusive rights to use the Swiss "Photochrom" process for converting black-and-white photographs into color images and printing them by photolithography. This process permitted the mass production of color postcards, prints, and albums for sale to the American market.
Late in 1897, Livingstone persuaded the accomplished American landscape photographer, William Henry Jackson, to join the firm. This added the thousands of negatives produced by Jackson to the Detroit Photographic Company's inventory. Jackson's collection included city and town views, images of prominent buildings, scenes along railroad lines, views of hotels and resorts, and the like.
The nation's strong interest in the 1898 Spanish-American War and the expansion of U.S. Naval power accounts for the firm's large inventory of many photographs of Cuba and scenes related to the war and for the hundreds of images of warships.
In the late 1890s, the Detroit Photographic Company expanded their inventory to include photographic copies of works of art, which were popular educational tools as well as inexpensive home decor.
The firm was known as the Detroit Photographic Co. until 1905 when it became the Detroit Publishing Company. William Henry Jackson became the plant manager in 1903, leaving him with less time to travel and take photographs. With the declining sale of photographs and postcards during World War I, and the introduction of new and cheaper printing methods used by competing firms, the Detroit Publishing Company went into receivership in 1924. They liquidated their assets in 1932.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/det/background.html
Person TypeInstitution
Last Updated8/7/24
Terms
American, active 1895 - 1924
Bishopbriggs, 1818 - 1878, Venice
active Boston and Waban, Massachusetts, about 1910 - 1950