About This Image

Title, negative number 53499/54121, and Copyright 1900/1904 by Detroit Photographic Co." engraved on lower edge of print.

The Detroit Publishing Company was an American photographic publishing firm best known for its large assortment of photochrom color postcards and prints. First called the Detroit Photographic Company, it was launched in the late 1890's by Detroit, Michigan businessman and publisher William A. Livingstone, Jr., and photographer and photo-publisher Edwin H. Husher. 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 Publishing Company's inventory.

They obtained the exclusive rights to use the Photochrom process for the American market. This technique, developed in Zurich, Switzerland, converted black-and-white photographs into color images and allowed the company to mass-produce color postcards and prints long before color photography became economically feasible.