Village near Yokohama, Japan, c.1869

It’s not an institution best known for its photographic collection, yet the British Library next week unveils an important archive of historic images which trace the development of the medium from its beginnings in 1839 to the early 1900s.

The core of the collection comes, in fact, from the British Museum, which has handed over to the library a diverse stock of photographs it acquired in the second half of the 19th century. There is scant evidence that the original curators were collecting photography for its own sake; rather, the images were mainly by-products of the museum’s book-collecting activities (photographers then, as today, were more likely to see their work bound in books than mounted on gallery walls). The museum’s map library also amassed a considerable collection of photographs; these appear to have been bought as topographical records rather than being collected for their standalone value as picturesque landscapes.

Trilithons B and C from the south-west, Stonehenge, c.1867

Scientific photographs were also saved. In its infancy, photography was often described as “half art, half science”, and indeed the former often became a tool for the latter, as in the case of Anna Atkins’s photographs, part of an extensive archive documenting marine plants.

Photography, new as it was in those years, helped to make sense of the world. It provided evidence of imperceptible phenomena in disciplines ranging from geology to biology and astronomy. In the last decade of the 19th century, Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays extended human vision; and what had been a practical tool inadvertently revealed a world of startling beauty. The question persisted: was it art or science?

Photography also made the world feel a smaller place. Some of its first subjects were colonised peoples, portrayed at the height of the British Empire. The Victorian fervour for classification extended now to human beings. Using theories of physiognomy, the Victorians sought to demonstrate the “objective” differences between races and social categories – and to document them photographically.

Arab woman of the Sudan, 1879

The British Library continues to build on its 19th-century collection. It recently acquired a set of photographs, correspondence and manuscripts relating to William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of negative positive photography, and the Kodak Archive, which focuses on the growth of photography as a popular, democratic medium. The latter took the technology away from its altar of science and objectivity – perhaps for the better.

X-ray photograph of frogs, c.1896 Photogenic drawing of botanical specimens, 1839

Fox Talbot once said of the camera: “The instrument chronicles whatever it sees and certainly would delineate a chimney pot or chimney sweeper with the same impartiality as it would the Apollo of Belvedere.” The British Library’s photographs remind of us a time when that notion went unquestioned.

Nelson’s Column under construction, London

‘Points of View: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs’ runs October 30 to March 7 2010 in the Paccar Gallery at the British Library, London NW1; www.bl.uk/whatson