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Autochrome. The first true color photographic process Rebecca Young Media 203 May 8, 2012. Arnold Genthe Collection @ Library of Congress.
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Autochrome The first true color photographic process Rebecca Young Media 203 May 8, 2012 Arnold Genthe Collection @ Library of Congress
Antman, Mark. ”The Autochrome: 100 Years of Color Photography." The Picture Professional, Issue 2 (2007) ; the imageworks.com. Web. Web. 7 May 2012. By the early 1900s, black-and-white photo technology had come a long way. “Black-and-white plates had been perfected and blazingly fast shutter speeds of 1/60 second were possible.”1 But nobody had been able to come up with an uncomplicated process that produced satisfying color photographs. Wilbur Wright on the Wright Glider in 1902 – Public domain
French inventors, Auguste and Louis Lumière, were the sons of a painter who’d become a photographer. The brothers began creating photographic technology at an early age, including a dry black-and-white plate that was eventually mass produced in the family’s factory in Lyon. The brothers made creation of a process to produce color photography their mission. Auguste Lumière (left) and Louis Lumière (right) - Wikicommons
The Lumière brothers successfully devised a color photographic process, which they patented in 1903 presented to the world in 1907. The key to the process was potato starch, which they pulverized into tiny grains and dyed orange, green and violet. “The autochrome process utilized one of the fundamental elements of color theory: the fact that nearly all visible hues can be re-created by combining a few basic colors …. The system also capitalized on a quirk of human vision: the basic colors need not actually be combined to create new hues but can simply be juxtaposed as tiny dots.” 2 BastinM – Wikicommons Wood, John. "Autochrome." American History Illustrated 29.1 (1994): 54. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 May 2012.
The tiny colored particles of potato starch were mixed and spread onto a glass plate that was coated with sticky clear varnish. Steel rollers flattened the grains. Gaps were filled with charcoal, then the whole plate was coated with silver bromide. Then the plate could be put into the camera.Light passed through the translucent potato grains and a colored image printed on the emulsion to create a color photograph. Woman in satin dress holding mirror – George Eastman House Collection, Wikicommons
Autochrome circa pre 1925 provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Nordiskamuseet as part of a cooperation project with Wikimedia Sverige.
Antman, Mark. ”The Autochrome: 100 Years of Color Photography." The Picture Professional, Issue 2 (2007) ; the imageworks.com. Web. Web. 7 May 2012. There was great excitement about the autochrome process. The photographs were hailed for their luminous, painterly, dreamlike quality. Photographer Edward Steichen said: “I have no medium that can give me colour of such wonderful luminosity as the Autochrome plate. One must go to stained glass for such color resonance, as the palette and canvas are a dull and lifeless medium in comparison.” 3
'Mother and Child’ – Henry EssenhighCorke (1883-1919) – Wikicommons
A Lumiere Brothers Autochrome of a Nieuport 23 C. 1 fighter – Wikicommons, public domain
Resources • Antman, Mark. ”The Autochrome: 100 Years of Color Photography." The Picture Professional, Issue 2 (2007) ; the imageworks.com. Web. Web. 7 May 2012. • wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons • Wood, John. "Autochrome." American History Illustrated 29.1 (1994): 54. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 May 2012. • Poole, Robert M. "In Living Color." Smithsonian 38.6 (2007): 60-63. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 May 2012. • Crowley, Stephen. Autochrome’s Enduring Allure. May 27, 2010. http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/archive-17/ Web. May 6, 2012.
