A grouping of three photographs with unusual subject matter for two in the first issue: the explosion and tornado. These types of documentary works show Sun & Shade publisher Ernest Edwards had not quite settled on specific subject matter for the periodical, casting a wide net for unusual images he believed his readers would enjoy. These types of scenes were soon replaced by plates featuring the magnificence of natural wonders: places like Niagara Falls, The Redwoods, etc. would feature in future issues, as well as many “beauty spots from nature” by some of the finest photographers then working.

The explosion and tornado photographs were likely chosen to show the present advanced state of technical photography at the time of publication. They show the effects achieved using stop-motion advancements in camera equipment, film and camera shutter speed and refinements. Carleton Watkins, one of the finest photographers of the American West is given credit for the explosion photograph, with the SF designation before his surname representing his home city of San Francisco.

Charles L. Judd took the tornado photograph on June 6, 1887, said to be one of the first known photographs of a tornado taken in North Dakota. (although the photo was taken in Jamestown, Dakota Territory at the time)

The church and cemetery photograph was chosen as a fine example of architectural photography by Arnold, who later became the official photographer of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

Carleton Watkins: 1829–1916

Carleton E. Watkins was an American photographer of the 19th century. Born in New York, he moved to California and quickly became interested in photography. He focused mainly on landscape photography, and Yosemite Valley was a favorite subject of his. His photographs of the valley significantly influenced the United States Congress‘ decision to preserve it as a National Park.—Wikipedia (2026)

The Cascade Locks and Canal was a navigation project on the Columbia River between the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, completed in 1896. It allowed the steamboats of the Columbia River to bypass the Cascades Rapids, and thereby opened a passage from the lower parts of the river as far as The Dalles. The locks were submerged and rendered obsolete in 1938, when the Bonneville Dam was constructed, along with a new set of locks, a short way downstream.—Wikipedia (2026)

Charles L. Judd: 1856-1936

Judd, a commercial photographer from Jamestown, North Dakota, is credited with taking the first known photographs of a tornado in North Dakota on June 6, 1887, known as the Grand Forks/East Grand Forks Tornado.

The following newspaper article is courtesy Reshaping The Tornado Belt The Grand Forks/East Grand Forks Tornado of June 16, 1887:

The Scientific World Agitated About a Dakota Photographer’s Work.  Special to the Globe.  Jamestown, July 1. – Shortly after Mr. C. L. Judd, of this place, obtained two negatives of the small cyclone which passed to the northwest, June 6,  he wrote an account of the same for an eastern journal of Photography, describing the photographs and the storm cloud, the appearance of which had been caught by the magic of his camera.  The scientific world is now more than ever before engaged in the investigation of these phenomenas, and the information of Mr. Judd’s cyclone was not long in reaching their ears.  A day of so ago he was in receipt of a letter from the proprietors of Scribner’s Magazine, offering to purchase the negative, or at least photographs from the same, to be used in an illustrated article in the August number of that monthly, the paper to be prepared by the professor of natural history at Harvard university.  Full credit is to be given to the Dakota photographer.  Mr. Judd has forwarded the negatives, and the public is awaiting with interest the publication of the cyclone article.  (The Saint Paul Daily Globe, Saturday Morning, July 2, 1887, Page 9)

Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical

“Within the covers of Sun and Shade…We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases,”—Ernest Edwards, president & publisher, 1889

In July, 1888, the first issue of Sun & Shade: A Photographic Record of Events, was published in New York City by The Photo-Gravure Company. Essentially a high-class art periodical, each issue featured eight or more beautiful hand-pulled photogravures as well as plates printed in photogelatine, (collotype) and halftone. These were collected within a stapled, folio-sized magazine issued monthly.  The subject matter included the work of leading amateur and professional photographers, as well as works of art—many from the galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The December issue—Christmas themed—featured a specially designed cover printed in green ink.  Success was swift. The first issue sold 1000 copies “in a fortnight”. (1.) Within the first year, Sun & Shade quickly increased circulation to 4000 copies a month. With a public demand for reprinting earlier issues, this success lead to a rebranding, after which, beginning with the September, 1889 issue, the magazine was renamed Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical. The final issue was March, 1896, when financial issues to the parent company, spurred by the eventual May, 1896 bankruptcy of the N.Y. Photo-Gravure Company, forced its closure.

Sun & Shade would become the ultimate statement of the many skills and inquisitive mind of Englishman Ernest Edwards. (1836-1903) Essentially his own printed passion project, the magazine was fueled by his ongoing love of photography in the field (issues featured many plates by him over the years) and a deeply scientific mind which pushed the advancement of the state of photo-mechanical reproduction and fine printing.

The son of a clergyman from Bloomsbury in London, he initially made a name for himself taking photographic portraits of eminent people in his Baker Street gallery. (Charles Darwin sat for him several times) His love of the outdoors also bore fruit and he became an accomplished alpine photographer. But his real interest centered around photo-mechanical reproduction. In 1869, he took out a patent in England for his own rudimentary collotype process called heliotype. In the Fall of 1872, he moved across the pond along with his wife Charlotte, and became superintendent of Boston’s Heliotype Printing Company after selling the American rights to American publisher James Ripley Osgood. (1836–1892) Edwards ran the Heliotype Printing Co. there until the end of 1884. The following year the James R. Osgood & Co. went bankrupt, although not a result of the heliotype division.

Growing restless in Boston, he then moved to New York City, where he established a new firm in March, 1885: The Photo-Gravure Company, (subsequently renamed The New York Photo-Gravure Company) with offices in Manhattan and a leased printing factory in Brooklyn. In 1887, his company received perhaps the one commission it’s best known for today: the printing of  781 collotypes, which Edwards called photogelatine plates, making up the monumental publication:

Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872-1885, with the landmark sequenced motion study photographs taken by British photographer Eadweard Muybridge. 

Restructured in 1891 as the New York Photogravure Co., Ernest Edwards continued to advance the state of photo-mechanical printing during his final decade, with Sun & Shade publishing some of the earliest examples of his own invention by 1894: plates printed in a three-color process called chrome-gelatine, a variation of his heliotype process.

Quality Rather than Quantity

Even though it survived less than eight years in print, describing Sun & Shade in Ernest Edward’s own words is perhaps the best posterity for this important photographic periodical with an artistic heart. One year after its’ debut, he wrote the following, published in The Photographic Times for August 2, 1889:

“A year ago we commenced the publication of our novel venture in journalism Sun and Shade, a Picture Periodical without letterpress, almost as an experiment, with a modest list of less than fifty subscribers. To-day we are printing an edition of 4,000 copies monthly. A sufficiently convincing proof of the wisdom of our hope that there was room for us.

“In our rapid growth the wish has been indicated unmistakably for the higher grade of pictures, and of the higher class–always for quality rather than quantity. Following rather than leading such a wish, we feel that we make no mistake in marking the future career of the magazine to be rather that of an artistic periodical than a photographic record of events.

*Our efforts shall be directed in the future to make Sun and Shade an artistic periodical which shall be not only pleasing but educational in its broadest sense, Some of our plans may be briefly referred to.

“We shall reproduce the leading pictures in the great collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Within the covers of Sun and Shade will be found from time to time, reproductions of the works of American artists. We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases, And we shall supplement these special features with examples of sculpture, architecture, and industrial art. If in the future we receive as hearty a response to our efforts as we have received in the past, our task will be indeed pleasant and our road to success a royal one.” (p. 394)

1. Notice: Sun & Shade: October, 1888. The August and September issues did not appear.