The role played in the 19th century by original photographs as illustrations in books was by no means insignificant. The procedure was expensive because each individual photograph had to be pasted into the books by hand.
»The Far East«, which began to appear in 1870, is an especially interesting example, for it brings two media together: magazines and early travel photographs from China and Japan.
The editions from 1876 onward each contain up to eight albumin photographs pasted onto separate sheets. They show views of cities and towns, persons and scenes from daily life in China and Japan.