Everyday life on the sun-baked streets of 19th century North Africa are captured in some of the earliest colour photographs snapped by colonial touris

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Rare colour postcards have shed light on everyday life on the sun-baked streets of North Africa at the end of the 19th century.


The pictures, taken in 1899 by European tourists, offer a glimpse into what life was like in the region over 100 years ago.


The original photos were put through a Photocrom process - a technique used to apply realistic colour to black-and-white images which predate practical colour photography.


They show men at the mosque, children at school and women having tea in North Africa.


At the turn of the 19th century, countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia were popular destinations with the colonial classes of Britain and France.


And with this European tourists who sought exoticism, wanted to snap pictures of local people going about their daily lives to show people back home.


Among the newly emerged images are those showing a man riding a camel near the pyramids, men gathering around a performance by a snake charmer and men standing outside a Tunisian cathedral.


These photographs sit in a moment in time when the growth of industry, science and engineering were leading to an increasing number of privileged Europeans travelling abroad.


The 19th Century saw a number of European countries, including England, empires.


'The scramble for Africa', as it was termed, which saw the rapid European colonisation of Africa also took place at the start of the 19th Century.


By the end of the century Egypt was a British protectorate, while Algeria and Tunisia were European colonies and Morocco, though not yet a colony, had a heavy European presence.


One result of this was that by the end of the century European colonists had begun capturing photographic images from colonies across North Africa.


The Photochroms capture a particular moment in history before the First World War and rising protests by the colonised changed life in Africa.

 

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A man rides a camel through the desert close to the Grand Pyramid in Egyptian capital Cairo in newly emerged pictures from North Africa from 1899

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Arab men wearing traditional robes chat to each other as they file out of a mosque in the Tunisian capital Tunis after prayers

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At the turn of the 19th century, countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia were popular destinations with the colonial classes of Britain and France. Pictured is a crowd gathering around a snake charmer in Tunis

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The images were put through a Photocrom process - a technique used to apply realistic colour to black-and-white images which predate practical colour photography. Pictured are Moorish women taking tea in Algiers, Algeria

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Children sit down at looms to weave fabric at the Luce Ben Aben, School of Arab Embroidery in Algiers in Algeria

 

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Among the newly emerged images are those showing a man riding a camel near the pyramids, men gathering around a performance by a snake charmer and men standing outside a Tunisian cathedral, pictured

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Colour postcards of life on the sun-baked streets of Tunisia at the end of the 19th Century have been revealed. Pictured is a market in Kairwan in northern Tunisia

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The original pictures, from 1899, were put through a Photocrom process - a technique used to apply realistic colour to black-and-white images which predate practical colour photography. Pictured is a busy street in Kairwan in northern Tunisia

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Invented by a Swiss printer in the 1880s, the process began with coating a tablet of lithographic limestone with a light-sensitive emulsion, then exposing it to sunlight under a photo negative for up to several hours. Pictured are Arabs in the capital Tunis

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Following detailed notes on colour made by the original photographer, additional litho stones would be prepared for each tint to be used in the final color image often more than a dozen stones for a single postcard. Pictured is the drawing room of the Kasr-el-Said

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When completed, the delicate process produced surprisingly lifelike color with far greater precision than traditional hand-colouring. Pictured is the bedchamber of the late Bey of Tunis, Kasr-el-Said

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These images capture the ornate palaces and bustling markets of Tunisia in its first decades as a French protectorate. Pictured is a view of Kairwan from the minaret of the Great Mosque

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This picture shows a group of men talking in the streets of Kairwan in 1899. These color postcards of the sun-baked streets and Moorish architecture of Tunisia were created using the Photochrom process

 

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[h=3]BRINGING PICTURES TO LIFE: PHOTOCROM PROCESS[/h]

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Men relax in the shade, wearing traditional North African robes to keep cool, outside a Moorish cafe in Tunis in 1899

Invented by a Swiss printer in the 1880s, the Photocrom process began with coating a tablet of lithographic limestone with a light-sensitive emulsion, then exposing it to sunlight under a photo negative for between 10 to 30 minutes in summer or up to several hours in winter.
The emulsion would harden in proportion to the tones of the image and the less-hardened portions would be removed with a solvent, leaving a fixed lithographic image on the stone.
Following detailed notes on colour made by the original photographer, litho stones would be prepared for each tint to be used in the final color image. Often more than a dozen stones would be needed for a single postcard.
Each tint would then be applied, using separate stones with the appropriate retouched image.
When completed, the delicate process produced surprisingly lifelike color with far greater precision than traditional hand-colouring.
Despite the prints looking very similar to colour photographs when the pictures are viewed with a magnifying glass the small dots that make up the ink-based image can be seen.
These early Photochrom prints were immensely popular especially because, although colour photography had been developed, it was still rare.
The process was mainly used to print postcards which became particularly popular in the US after the US Congress passed a law in 1898 allowing private companies to print postcards, as opposed to the post office having a monopoly on them.
They were sold at tourist sites and through mail order catalogs to travellers, tourists and photo collectors.
The technique was popular around the world and there are hundreds of surviving Photocrom pictures from a range of countries including the US, France and England.

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Men dressed in blue and white robes walk through the sun-kissed streets of Kairwan in the north of Tunisia

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Street cafe: Pictured is what al-fresco dining looked liked in Kairwan, north Tunisia, at the end of the 19th Century

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People are seen roaming the beautiful waterfront area of Sousse - which is around 100 miles south of the capital Tunis

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Pictured is a view of the capital Tunis from the Paris Hotel - one of the luxury hotels in a grand, belle epoque-style building

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A view of Marr Street in the capital city Tunis as men and women walk by, with some sitting on the pavement in the shade

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Pictured are a family of Bedouin beggars in the Tunisian capital city. In those days Bedouin people were found in Middle Eastern deserts, especially in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan

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This picture shows men sitting outside a Moorish cafe in Tunis. Moors refers to the Muslim people Maghreb, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and Malta during the Middle Ages. They were initially Berbers and Arabs from North Africa

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Pictured is the hustling and bustling Bab Suika-Suker Square, in the capital city of Tunisia - Tunis

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The throne room of Bardo Palace, Tunis. Built by the Hafsid dynasty in the 15th Century, the name Bardo comes from the Spanish word 'prado' meaning a garden. Bardo became a residence of the Tunis court in the 18th Century

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Bardo became a political, intellectual and religious centre. The ancient beys' residence was the site of the Tunisian National Assembly headquarters and the National Museum opened there in 1882. Pictured is the tribunal chamber

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Sick patients, waiting to receive treatment, sit on cushioned benches outside the Sadiky Hospital in the capital city of Tunisia - Tunis

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Men try to do deals and grab a bargain at the Kasbah Market in Tunis. Today, Kasbah Square is a popular tourist attraction

 

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[h=3]The emergence of colour: the history of early colour photography[/h]The first ever known photograph was taken in 1827 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. It was still over ten years, however, before photographers began experimenting with colour.
The first attempts at colour photography were made in 1840 with experimenters looking for a 'chameleon substance' which would take on the colour of the light that fell on it.
In 1855 Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first suggested the three-color method, which has come to form the basis of virtually all colour processing, in a paper in colour vision.
The three-colour method is based on the theory that the human eye sees colour because its inner surface is covered with millions of intermingled types of cells, each of which are responsive to a certain coloured light.
The process works by taking photos through thorough a red, green and blue filter.
In 1861 Thomas Sutton collaborated with Maxwell using this technique and projected the negatives through seperate magic lanterns with the same coloured filters to produce a colour image of a tartan ribbon.
Despite the break through it was still years before colour photography started to become common place.
Before the late 1890s color photography was still a relatively rare art form practiced by a few experimental photographers.
By 1898, however, it became possible to buy the equipment needed and supplies ready-made.
Frederic Eugene Ives built on Maxwell's method, developing the Kromskop system which was lauded for its realistic effects.
In 1935, American ******* Kodak, founder of the now renowned Kodak brand, introduced one of the first colour films and named it Kodachrome.
Kodachrome had three layers of emulsion coated on a single base, each layer recording one of the three additive primaries, red, green, and blue.
To fit with the company's 'you press the button, we do the rest' slogan, the film was made to be simply loaded into the camera, exposed in the ordinary way and then mailed to Kodak for processing.
Color photography has been the dominant form of photography since the 1970s, with monochrome photography mostly relegated to niche markets such as art photography.
Since 1970 colour photography has been the most popular form of photography with black and white photography keeping its strongest audience in art photography.

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Two men selling carpets and rugs smile for the camera at a bazaar in Tunis. Bazaars still exist in Tunisia today and are very popular with tourists looking to buy high quality goods for low prices

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Pictured is the Barbouchi Freres store in the Arabic bazaar in Tunis. The shop, which sold ornaments, was run by the Barbouchi family in 1899

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Children of a nomadic family are seen sitting on the grass outside their community's camp on the outskirts of Tunis

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These colour postcards of the sun-baked streets and Moorish architecture of Tunisia were created using the Photochrom process. A group of men are pictured at Bab Aleona

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A snake charmer - pretending to hypnotise a snake by playing an instrument called pungi - puts on a performance in Tunis

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St Louis Cathedral in Carthage. Since 1993, the cathedral has been known as the 'Acropolium'. It is no longer used for worship, but instead hosts concerts of Tunisian and classical music

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A procession, with men holding large flags, goes through the centre of Kairwan, in the north of Tunisia in 1899

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A Bedouin woman, wearing grey robes held together by a gold chain, poses for a photograph in the capital city of Tunisia

 

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