“When a man is tired of Lon­don,” Samuel John­son so famous­ly said, “he is tired of life.” Of course, P.J. O’Rourke lat­er added that “he might just be tired of shab­by, sad crowds, low-income hous­ing that looks worse than the weath­er, and tat­too-faced, spike-haired pea brains on the dole,” but then, every­one expe­ri­ences the Eng­lish cap­i­tal a bit dif­fer­ent­ly. John­son’s Lon­don, the Lon­don of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, looks to some like a city at its zenith; oth­ers might even think the same about the Lon­don O’Rourke made fun of in the 1980s. Every era in Lon­don is a gold­en age to some­one.

Today, we offer a vivid glimpse into anoth­er dis­tinct peri­od in Lon­don his­to­ry, the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, by way of the Library of Con­gress’ col­lec­tion of pho­tocrom prints. A few years ago we fea­tured images of Venice cap­tured with the same col­orized-pho­tog­ra­phy process, which pro­duced what the Library of Con­gress describes as ink-based images made with “the direct pho­to­graph­ic trans­fer of an orig­i­nal neg­a­tive onto litho and chro­mo­graph­ic print­ing plates.”

They may “look decep­tive­ly like col­or pho­tographs,” but “when viewed with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass the small dots that com­prise the ink-based pho­to­me­chan­i­cal image are vis­i­ble. The pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process per­mit­ted mass pro­duc­tion of the vivid col­or prints.”

The late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry saw the emer­gence of a robust mar­ket for pho­tocrom prints, “sold at tourist sites and through mail order cat­a­logs to globe trot­ters, arm­chair trav­el­ers, edu­ca­tors, and oth­ers to pre­serve in albums or put on dis­play.” Hence, per­haps, the focus on Lon­don sites of touris­tic appeal: Tow­er Bridge, Trafal­gar Square, the British Muse­um, and even the ful­ly out­fit­ted “Yeo­man of the Guard” you see just above. But print also (and by appear­ances more cor­rect­ly) describes him as a “Beefeater,” the pop­u­lar name for the dif­fer­ent body of cer­e­mo­ni­al tow­er guardians the Yeomen Warders of Her Majesty’s Roy­al Palace and Fortress the Tow­er of Lon­don, and Mem­bers of the Sov­er­eign’s Body Guard of the Yeo­man Guard Extra­or­di­nary. (Got that?)

You can browse, and in var­i­ous for­mats down­load, the 33 images in the Library of Con­gress’ Lon­don pho­tocrom print col­lec­tion here. They all date from between 1890 and 1900, as do the near­ly 1000 images in their Eng­land pho­tocrom print col­lec­tion, whose loca­tions extend far beyond Lon­don. Go to Eng­land today and you’ll notice how much has changed in the past 125 or so years, of course, but how much has­n’t. Grum­bling being some­thing of a nation­al sport over there, espe­cial­ly in Lon­don, the trav­el­er hears no end of com­plaints about how the city and coun­try have gone to the dogs, but can also take some com­fort in the fact that, even back in the pic­turesque pho­tocrom era, peo­ple were air­ing all the same gripes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don

1927 Lon­don Shown in Mov­ing Col­or

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

2,000 Years of London’s His­tor­i­cal Devel­op­ment, Ani­mat­ed in 7 Min­utes

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A cou­ple days ago, a visu­al­ly com­pelling thread on Twit­ter explod­ed with thou­sands of shares and likes and dozens of users sub­mit­ting their own con­tri­bu­tions. The thread (a series of con­nect­ed tweets for the Twit­ter unini­ti­at­ed) has become an evolv­ing pho­to essay of women activists stand­ing up to walls of mil­i­ta­rized riot police and mobs of angry big­ots. The pho­tos fea­ture sub­jects like Tess Asplund, Leshia Evans, and Saf­fiyah Khan, and his­tor­i­cal inspi­ra­tions like Glo­ria Richard­son and Bernadette Devlin. Many of the sub­jects are unknown or unnamed, but no less icon­ic. These images, from all over the world, of women stand­ing defi­ant­ly and often alone, against heav­i­ly armed and armored, most­ly male pow­er struc­tures inspire and, in the case of chil­dren like Ruby Bridges, can break your heart.

Pho­tos like these serve as pow­er­ful and nec­es­sary tes­ta­ments to the fact that in social move­ments through­out his­to­ry, women have held the front lines. And pho­tog­ra­phers have cap­tured their activist spir­it since the ear­ly days of the medi­um. In the 19th cen­tu­ry, long expo­sures and frag­ile, finicky equip­ment made action shots dif­fi­cult-to-impos­si­ble, and for a vari­ety of cul­tur­al rea­sons, many women were far less like­ly to con­front armed men on the streets. There­fore, the por­traits of women activists from the time tend toward tra­di­tion­al seat­ed pos­es. But as famous pho­tographs of Har­ri­et Tub­man and Sojourn­er Truth demon­strate, these images do not show us pas­sive observers of his­to­ry.

Pic­tures of Tub­man and Truth have made their way into every ele­men­tary school his­to­ry text­book. Far less well-known are the many oth­er African-Amer­i­can women activists of the late-nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies who fought for the rights of black Amer­i­cans in edu­ca­tion, at the vot­ing booth, and every­where else. Dur­ing Recon­struc­tion espe­cial­ly, many such activists rose to promi­nence in acad­e­mia, jour­nal­ism, and civic lead­er­ship. Women like Fan­nie Bar­ri­er Williams, at the top, whose wise, direct gaze illus­trates her fear­less­ness as an edu­ca­tion­al reformer and suf­frag­ist, who, despite her maid­en name, broke sev­er­al bar­ri­ers for black women in high­er edu­ca­tion and promi­nent pub­lic events like the 1893 Columbian Expo­si­tion. Against pater­nal­is­tic claims that for­mer slaves weren’t ready for cit­i­zen­ship, writes the Rochester Region­al Library Coun­cil, Williams “called on all women to unite and claim their inalien­able rights.”

Above, we see Lau­ra A. Moore West­brook. Of the first gen­er­a­tion to grow up after slav­ery, West­brook received a master’s degree in 1880, the only woman in a class of four. She went on to teach and fight fierce­ly for for­mer­ly enslaved stu­dents in Texas, earn­ing admi­ra­tion, as Mon­roe Alphus Majors wrote in 1893, “in con­spic­u­ous instances and under very flat­ter­ing cir­cum­stances” from con­tem­po­raries like Fred­er­ick Dou­glass. Majors’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion will sound patron­iz­ing to our ears, but in the rigid terms of the time, it offers near­ly as vivid a por­trait as her pho­to­graph: “Her motive to do good far sur­pass­es her van­i­ty, except when her race is attacked, then, man­like, she with the pen strikes back, and even goes beyond her loy­al­ty to serve, but makes last­ing impres­sions upon those who are so unfor­tu­nate to get with­in her range.”

These images come from a Library of Con­gress archive of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry African Amer­i­can activists from the col­lec­tion of William Hen­ry Richards, a pro­fes­sor at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty Law School from 1890 to 1928 and a staunch cam­paign­er for civ­il rights and lib­er­ties. Most of the por­traits are of the for­mal, staged vari­ety, but we also have the more relaxed, even play­ful series of pos­es from activists Eliz­a­beth Brooks and Emma Hack­ley, above. Richards’ col­lec­tion, writes cura­tor Bev­er­ly Bran­non at the LoC site, includes many “peo­ple who joined him and oth­ers work­ing in the suf­frage and tem­per­ance move­ments and in edu­ca­tion, jour­nal­ism and the arts.” The pho­tographs “show the women at ear­li­er ages than most por­traits pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able of them online.”

These por­traits date from a time, notes Alli­son Meier at Hyper­al­ler­gic, when “rights and oppor­tu­ni­ties for African Amer­i­cans, espe­cial­ly women, remained severe­ly lim­it­ed.” Many “obscure black women writ­ers,” jour­nal­ists, and teach­ers “await their biog­ra­phers,”  argues Jonathan Daniel Wells, and per­haps the redis­cov­ery of these pho­tographs will prompt his­to­ri­ans to recon­sid­er their promi­nence. While they did not phys­i­cal­ly stand up to armed mobs or police bat­tal­ions, these activists, writes Meier, “spoke out bold­ly against gen­der inequal­i­ty, while at the same time remain­ing cog­nizant that espe­cial­ly in the so-called New South, racism, vio­lence and mur­der were ever-present dan­gers for African Amer­i­can women and men.”

Hyper­al­ler­gic/Library of Con­gress

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

W.E.B. Du Bois Cre­ates Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, Artis­tic Data Visu­al­iza­tions Show­ing the Eco­nom­ic Plight of African-Amer­i­cans (1900)

Watch the Pio­neer­ing Films of Oscar Micheaux, America’s First Great African-Amer­i­can Film­mak­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness