Welcome, Gentle Reader.
I wish to acknowledge the many people who have generously allowed me to copy and reproduce here material from their private collections and the support given to me by curators and staff in public institutions. My especial thanks go to Clare Everitt, the administrator of Picture Norfolk within the Norfolk County Council Library and Information Service and Michael and Frances Holmes of Norwich Heritage Projects who designed and built this website. As documentary evidence about early Norfolk photographers and their work is hard to discover, I would be delighted to expand the website to include any such material to which you may have access. [See Contact] 

In my attempt to place early Norfolk photographs within the framework of photographic history I have gathered material over many years and hope that you enjoy your visit to our analogue past. It is not widely known that during the mid-19th century, photographs were silver-based, monochrome images, sun-printed from paper negatives. These days, about 5,000 colour images can be made from one ounce of silver.

‘Of the various applications of chemistry to the arts, there is perhaps none more interesting than photography – the art by which images formed in the camera obscura are fixed upon various tablets, such as glass, paper, metallic plates, leather, et cetera; for when it is considered that by means of suitable lenses an image may be formed of any object, celestial or terrestrial, from which light proceeds, the applications of photography appear to be unlimited, and the art assumes an intellectual character, which raises it above those other arts of civilisation that merely minister in some particular way to comfort or luxury.’     Dr. Sheridan Muspratt, circa 1860.