Within weeks of the almost simultaneaous announcements of successful photographic processes in England and France, photographers set out to capture the world's peoples and races, classes and ranks, from intimate domestic portraits, to studies of the different, the exotic, the picturesque, and the unknown. Published in conjunction with a major travelling exhibition of more than 240 rare vintage images drawn from the Wilson Center for Photography - one of the world's finest private collections - this book reveals these first encounters.