Underground Train, 1862

The photograph shows Underground Train: This is the first ever underground train journey, in London in 1862. It was taken in 1862, and like the best archival images it needs almost no explanation — the frame tells its own story.

The 1860s was the first decade in which photography documented events on a large scale. Wet-plate cameras were hauled to battlefields and city streets, and portrait studios spread through towns on both sides of the Atlantic, making a photograph an ordinary family possession for the first time.

Most photography of the period chased celebrities and headlines, which makes surviving images of daily routine all the more precious. This is what the world actually looked like when nobody thought it was worth remembering.