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'Snapshots of the West' virtual exhibition launch

Touchstones is hosting a launch party for the exhibit on October 26 at 1 p.m
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Hundreds of glass plate negatives were digitized for a new online exhibit by Touchstones Nelson.

Touchstones Nelson is pleased to announce the launch of its newest online exhibit Snapshots of the West. The site is a collection of glass plate negatives taken by Nelson resident Jake Ludwig at the turn of the 20th Century.

This exhibit features digitized copies of over 200 glass plate negatives taken by Ludwig, a local harness and hardware store owner and musician. The images showcase turn of the 20th century mining camps and equipment, trains, steamships and sternwheelers of Kootenay Lake, Yukon River and the Coast; towns and cities from Alaska to California, parks in Vancouver and Victoria, as well as, various Canadian government buildings in British Columbia. These photographs are originals and are not reproduced anywhere.

Snapshots of the West is a companion project to the three previously completed British Columbia History Digitization Program projects by Touchstones Nelson, which includes Landscape Lost: Forestry and Life in the Duncan River Valley, A Life in the Woods, which was presented at the BC Library Association Conference titled “Best of Digital BC: Digitization around the Province” and Changes Upstream, a collection of images of the area flooded by the Libby Dam by Stanley G. Triggs.

The creation of the site has been funded in part by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, British Columbia History Digitization Program. The exhibit is available at http://touchstonesnelson.ca/exhibitions/ludwig/.

Touchstones is hosting a launch party for the exhibit on October 26 at 1 p.m. to view the digitized images and mark another successful milestone in the museum's photo digitization efforts. Meet the collection’s donor Stanley G. Triggs — photographer, folk musician, and former curator of the McCord Museum of Photography at McGill University — and enjoy refreshments while watching the remarkable slideshow of Kootenay history.