This portfolio contains sixteen hand-pulled dust-grain photogravures of rare masterpieces from Britain’s greatest photographers, published in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The portfolio features important works by nineteenth-century masters of the medium such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Frederick H. Evans, Lady Hawarden, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Oscar G. Rejlander, Henry Peach Robinson, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Benjamin Brecknell Turner. Wherever possible, the plates have been made from the photographer’s original negatives, many of which were unavailable until production of this portfolio. Each image is printed on cotton rag, mold-made papers, with inks created especially for this project.

This single image is from one of thirty negatives that made up Rejlander’s famous “Two Ways of Life”. Combination printing disrupted what was understood to be the automatic character of the medium, and, despite Le Gray’s use of the technique, it was openly discouraged in French photographic circles.