Images created by Baraboo photographer Ephraim Burt Trimpey cover a broad spectrum of photographic styles and subjects ranging from portraits and documentary photos to city scenes and landscapes. A self-described "photo artist," Trimpey studied photography in the early years of the 20th century. Some of the portraits in the collection have the sepia-tinted, painterly quality of that era. Others, which date from the 1920s through the '40s, appear quite modern, with sharp focus and contrast.

Trimpey was acutely attuned to style and fashion, both historic and contemporary. There are anachronistic images of models (including Trimpey and his wife, Alice Kent Trimpey) posing in clothing from the mid-19th century with antiques selected from their extensive collection. Alice's antique dolls, in period dress and carefully posed tableaus, appear in a series of hand-tinted photographs. Other images record Baraboo businesses stocked with the most up-to-date appliances and furnishings.