These pictures were taken from an old coffee-table book of Germany. Other than two prefaces there was no text: only 304 full-page reproductions of black and white photographs with captions in five European languages.

I initially intended only to scan one or two pictures. However, as I began the task I began recognising so many places and being captivated by so many others that I decided it would be quicker to scan the lot like an automaton rather than leafing through and looking at every other picture. It took no more than a single evening to ‘process’ the entire book, and I now have the most wonderful resource of old photographs residing on my hard disk, and the net.

There are five pages besides this introduction:

1. the book's preface (in German)
2. about the photographs themselves (in German)
3. a map of Germany, showing the photographs' locations
4. index of the photographs (with thumbnail images)
5. index of the photographs (listed by name, ordered geographically)

Other groups of historic pictures:

• India in the 1890s (watercolours by Alice Papprill)
• Israel in the 1940s (photographs by an army chaplain and his regiment)
• England, Abroad and Still-Life photographs taken in the 1940s and 1950s by Robert Littlewood.