On his incredible illustration blog A Journey Round My Skull, Will has posted several selections of photochromes, or photochroms, or photochromosomes. [here and here] They were color-retouched photolithographs popular around the turn of the last century. They used at least six, and usually 10-15 tinted stones for each image.
I think the eerie light and tone looks like Darren Almond’s Full Moon photographs, but I like Will’s alternate description of the process, too: “Max Ernst photoshops livestock into the xeroxed ruins of Caspar David Friedrich paintings.”
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the making of, by greg allen