These photographs, collected by Connecticut College art history and anthropology professor Christopher B. Steiner, were created using a photo-multigraph or “trick mirror” technique.

Invented by James B. Shaw in Atlantic City, New Jersey during the early 1890s, a photo-multigraph is created by placing the sitter between two mirrors which are angled to produce four reflections of the subject.

By exposing a person’s face from every angle, the photo-multigraph was touted as a system which would enable “us to see ourselves as others see us.”