TIPPS: Tipped-in Photographic Prints from Early Photography Manuals

The Tipped-in Photographic Prints (TIPPs) database and website is a collaborative project between the Lens Media Lab at Yale University and the Library of Congress to digitize and make searchable the hundreds of photographic samples tipped into photography journals and manuals published between 1855 and 1900. These publications, which were created by photographers primarily located in the United States and Europe to transmit innovations in photographic practice, featured chemical recipes for new print processes, equipment designs, various types of commentary, and, importantly, tipped-in photographic samples. These samples include photographic and photomechanical prints as well as samples of photographic tools and accessories (e.g. tintype mounts and vignetting papers). Though often viewed as mere embellishments, these tipped-in samples functioned as dense depositories of photographic knowledge. Precisely dated and frequently identified in terms of who made them, where they were made, how they were made, and what they are made of, these samples collectively offer an unparallel resource for examining the technological, material, and aesthetic development of the medium over its formative decades. TIPPs allows researchers to easily access and query this rich but hitherto overlooked repository of data on the early history of photography.

Contributed by Katherine Mintie