"The extraordinary collection of photographs celebrates two eye-opening "discoveries" : first, that long before the invention of true color photography photographers were producing images rich in color--tones of gold, mauve, rose, blue, and many other hues; and, second, that the world's picture archives can still yield images of startling originality, often by well-known photographers. Thus, every photograph in this book is reproduced in full color, revealing the subtle tones of salt prints, ambrotypes, albumen prints, daguerreotypes, and other techniques whose real character has been known until recently only by collectors and connoisseurs. Here are works by the legendary pioneers Talbot, Daguerre, Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henri Le Secq, Gustave Le Gray, and Atget, as well as a host of astonishing pictures by unknown artists. There are also unfamiliar images by such masters as Stieglitz, August Sander, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martin Munkacsi, Kertész, Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange, and Margaret Bourke-White, bringing the collection up to the eve of World War II."--Jacket.