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The Autochrome Lumière was an early
color photography
Color photography is photography that uses media capable of capturing and reproducing colors. By contrast, black-and-white or gray-monochrome photography records only a single channel of luminance (brightness) and uses media capable only of ...
process patented in 1903 by the
Lumière brothers
Lumière is French for 'light'.
Lumiere, Lumière or Lumieres may refer to:
*Lumières, the philosophical movement in the Age of Enlightenment People
*Auguste and Louis Lumière, French pioneers in film-making Film and TV
* Institut Lumière, a ...
in France and first marketed in 1907. Autochrome was an
additive color
Additive color or additive mixing is a property of a color model that predicts the appearance of colors made by coincident component lights, i.e. the perceived color can be predicted by summing the numeric representations of the component colo ...
"mosaic screen plate" process. It was the principal color photography process in use before the advent of
subtractive color
Subtractive color or subtractive color mixing predicts the spectral power distribution of light after it passes through successive layers of partially absorbing media. This idealized model is the essential principle of how dyes and inks are use ...
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
in the mid-1930s.
Prior to the Lumière brothers,
Louis Ducos du Hauron Louis may refer to:
* Louis (coin)
* Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name
* Louis (surname)
* Louis (singer), Serbian singer
* HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy
See also
Derived or associated terms
* Lewis (d ...
utilized the separation technique to create colour images on paper with screen plates, producing natural colours through superimposition, which would become the foundation of all commercial colour photography. Descendants of photographer Antoine Lumière, inventors Louis and Auguste Lumière utilized Du Hauron's (1869) technique, which had already been improved upon by other inventors such as John Joly (1894) and James William McDonough (1896), making it possible to print photographic images in colour. One of the most broadly used forms of colour photography in the early twentieth century, autochrome was recognized for its aesthetic appeal.
Structure and use
Autochrome is an
additive color
Additive color or additive mixing is a property of a color model that predicts the appearance of colors made by coincident component lights, i.e. the perceived color can be predicted by summing the numeric representations of the component colo ...
"mosaic screen plate" process. The medium consists of a glass plate coated on one side with a random mosaic of microscopic grains of
potato starch
Potato starch is starch extracted from potatoes. The cells of the root tubers of the potato plant contain leucoplasts (starch grains). To extract the starch, the potatoes are crushed, and the starch grains are released from the destroyed cells. Th ...
dyed red-orange, green, and blue-violet (an unusual but functional variant of the standard red, green, and blue additive colors); the grains of starch act as color filters.
Lampblack
Carbon black (subtypes are acetylene black, channel black, furnace black, lamp black and thermal black) is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of coal and coal tar, vegetable matter, or petroleum products, including fuel oil, fluid ...
fills the spaces between grains, and a black-and-white
panchromatic
Panchromatic emulsion is a type of black-and-white photographic emulsion that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light.
Description
A panchromatic emulsion renders a realistic reproduction of a scene as it appears to the human eye, altho ...
silver halide
A silver halide (or silver salt) is one of the chemical compounds that can form between the element silver (Ag) and one of the halogens. In particular, bromine (Br), chlorine (Cl), iodine (I) and fluorine (F) may each combine with silver to prod ...
emulsion
An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that are normally immiscible (unmixable or unblendable) owing to liquid-liquid phase separation. Emulsions are part of a more general class of two-phase systems of matter called colloids. Althoug ...
is coated on top of the filter layer.
Unlike ordinary black-and-white plates, the Autochrome was loaded into the camera with the bare glass side facing the lens so that the light passed through the mosaic filter layer before reaching the emulsion. The use of an additional special orange-yellow filter in the camera was required to block ultraviolet light and restrain the effects of violet and blue light, parts of the
spectrum
A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors i ...
to which the emulsion was overly sensitive. Because of the light loss due to all the filtering, Autochrome plates required much longer exposures than black-and-white plates and films, which meant that a tripod or other stand had to be used and that it was not practical to photograph moving subjects. The plate was reversal-processed into a positive
transparency — that is, the plate was first developed into a negative image but not "fixed", then the silver forming the negative image was chemically removed, then the remaining silver halide was exposed to light and developed, producing a positive image.
The luminance filter (silver halide layer) and the mosaic chrominance filter (the colored potato starch grain layer) remained precisely aligned and were distributed together, so that light was filtered in situ. Each starch grain remained in alignment with the corresponding microscopic area of silver halide emulsion coated over it. When the finished image was viewed by transmitted light, each bit of the silver image acted as a micro-filter, allowing more or less light to pass through the corresponding colored starch grain, recreating the original proportions of the three colors. At normal viewing distances, the light coming through the individual grains blended together in the eye, reconstructing the color of the light photographed through the filter grains.
Manufacturing techniques
To create the Autochrome color filter mosaic, a thin glass plate was first coated with a transparent adhesive layer. The dyed starch grains were graded to between 5 and 10 micrometers in size and the three colors were thoroughly intermingled in proportions which made the mixture appear gray to the unaided eye. They were then spread onto the adhesive, creating a layer with approximately 4,000,000 grains per square inch but only one grain thick. The exact means by which significant gaps and overlapping grains were avoided still remains unclear. It was found that the application of extreme pressure would produce a mosaic that more efficiently transmitted light to the emulsion, because the grains would be flattened slightly, making them more transparent, and pressed into more intimate contact with each other, reducing wasted space between them. As it was impractical to apply such pressure to the entire plate all at once, a steamroller approach was used which flattened only one very small area at a time.
Lampblack
Carbon black (subtypes are acetylene black, channel black, furnace black, lamp black and thermal black) is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of coal and coal tar, vegetable matter, or petroleum products, including fuel oil, fluid ...
was used to block up the slight spaces that remained. The plate was then coated with
shellac
Shellac () is a resin secreted by the female lac bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes and dissolved in alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and ...
to protect the moisture-vulnerable grains and dyes from the water-based gelatin emulsion, which was coated onto the plate after the shellac had dried. The resulting finished plate was cut up into smaller plates of the desired size, which were packaged in boxes of four. Each plate was accompanied by a thin piece of cardboard colored black on the side facing the emulsion. This was to be retained when loading and exposing the plate and served both to protect the delicate emulsion and to inhibit
halation
An anti-halation backing is a layer found in many photographic films—and almost all film intended for motion picture cameras—usually a coating on the back of the film base, though it is sometimes incorporated between the light-sensitive emuls ...
.
Th
1906 U.S. patentdescribes the process more generally: the grains can be orange, violet, and green, or red, yellow, and blue (or "any number of colors"), optionally with black powder filling the gaps. Experimentations within the early twentieth century provided solutions to many issues, including the addition of screen plates, a yellow filter designed to balance the blue, and adjustments to the size of the silver halide crystals to allow for a broader spectrum of colour and control over the frequency of light.
Viewing techniques
Because the presence of the mosaic color screen made the finished Autochrome image very dark overall, bright light and special viewing arrangements were needed for satisfactory results.
Stereoscopic
Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics, or stereo imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the depth perception, illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stere ...
Autochromes were especially popular, the combined color and depth proving to be a bewitching experience to early 20th century eyes. Usually of a small size, they were most commonly viewed in a small hand-held box-type stereoscope. Larger, non-stereoscopic plates were most commonly displayed in a diascope, which was a folding case with the Autochrome image and a ground glass diffuser fitted into an opening on one side, and a mirror framed into the other side. The user would place the diascope near a window or other light source so that light passed through the diffuser and the Autochrome, and the resulting back-lit, dark-surrounded image would be viewed in the mirror. Slide projectors, then known as
magic lantern
The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a si ...
s and
stereopticon
A stereopticon is a slide projector or relatively powerful "magic lantern", which has two lenses, usually one above the other, and has mainly been used to project photographic images. These devices date back to the mid 19th century, and were a popu ...
s, were a less common but especially effective display technique, more suitable for public exhibitions. Unfortunately, projection required an extremely bright and therefore hot light source (a
carbon arc
An arc lamp or arc light is a lamp that produces light by an electric arc (also called a voltaic arc).
The carbon arc light, which consists of an arc between carbon electrodes in air, invented by Humphry Davy in the first decade of the 1800s, ...
or a 500 watt
bulb
In botany, a bulb is structurally a short stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs duri ...
were typical) and could visibly "fry" the plate if continued for more than two or three minutes, causing serious damage to the color. More than a few surviving Autochromes suffer from such "tanning" and conventional projection is not a recommended means of displaying these irreplaceable images today.
However, a projector-like optical system (i.e., using condenser lenses for illumination, with a viewing lens in place of the projection lens), employing daylight (not direct sunlight) for the light source, can produce comparably excellent visual results—although for only one viewer at a time—without the unacceptable hazards of actual projection.
The use of a "light box" or similar highly diffused artificial light source for viewing Autochromes, although now nearly universal, is unfortunate, as the heavy scattering of light within and among the several layers of coatings on the plate degrades the color saturation. The slight pinkish tinge caused by colloidal scattering (the effect seen through a glass of water into which a couple of drops of milk have been mixed) is exacerbated, and the use of artificial light—especially fluorescent light—upsets the color rendition of a system which the Lumière Brothers carefully balanced for use with natural daylight.
Making modern film or digital copies of Autochromes introduces other problems, because a color system based on red, green, and blue is used to copy an image that exists within the red-orange, green, and blue-violet system, providing further opportunities for color degradation. Vintage reproductions of Autochromes in old books and magazines have often been noticeably hand-adjusted by the photoengravers in an effort to compensate for some of the difficulties of reproduction, and as a result they sometimes look more like hand-colored photographs than "natural color" ones. In short, it is very difficult to form an accurate impression of the appearance of any Autochrome image without seeing the original "in person" and correctly illuminated.
The lamination of the grains, varnish and emulsion makes autochrome plates susceptible to deterioration with each layer being vulnerable to changes in environment including moisture, oxidation, cracking, or flaking as well as physical damage from handling; Solutions include conservative lighting conditions, chemical free materials, medium-range humidity control of between 63 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and a well designed preservation plan.
Artistic considerations
If an Autochrome was well made and has been well preserved, color values can be very good. The dyed starch grains are somewhat coarse, giving a hazy, pointillist effect, with faint stray colors often visible, especially in open light areas such as skies. The smaller the image, the more noticeable these effects are. Autochrome has been touted as "the colour of dreams." The resulting "dream-like" impressionist quality may have been one reason behind the enduring popularity of the medium even after more starkly realistic color processes had become available.
Although difficult to manufacture and fairly expensive, Autochromes were relatively easy to use and were immensely popular among enthusiastic amateur photographers, at least among those who could bear the cost and were willing to sacrifice the convenience of black and white hand-held "snapshooting." Autochromes failed to sustain the initial interest of more serious "artistic" practitioners, largely due to their inflexibility. Not only did the need for diascopes and projectors make them extremely difficult to publicly exhibit, they allowed little in the way of the
manipulation much loved by ''aficionados'' of the then-popular
Pictorialist
Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...
approach.
Advent of film-based versions
Autochromes continued to be produced as
glass
Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...
plates into the 1930s, when film-based versions were introduced, first Lumière Filmcolor sheet film in 1931, then Lumicolor roll film in 1933. Although these soon completely replaced glass plate Autochromes, their triumph was short-lived, as
Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
and
Agfa soon began to produce multi-layer subtractive color films (
Kodachrome
Kodachrome is the brand name for a color reversal film introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935. It was one of the first successful color materials and was used for both cinematography and still photography. For many years Kodachrome was widely used ...
and
Agfacolor Neu respectively). Nevertheless, the Lumière products had a devoted following, above all in France, and their use persisted long after modern color films had become available. The final version, Alticolor, was introduced in 1952 and discontinued in 1955, marking the end of the nearly fifty-year-long public life of the Autochrome.
Important Autochrome collections
Between 1909 and 1931, a collection of 72,000 autochrome photographs, documenting life at the time in 50 countries around the world, was created by French banker
Albert Kahn. The collection, one of the biggest of its kind in the world, is housed in The Albert Kahn Museum (
Musée Albert-Kahn
The Musée Albert-Kahn is a departmental museum in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, at 14, rue du Port, including four hectares of gardens, joining landscape scenes of various national traditions. The museum includes historical photographs and film ...
) on the outskirts of
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. A new compilation of images from the Albert Kahn collection was published in 2008.
The
National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational organizations in the world.
Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, and ...
made extensive use of autochromes and other mosaic color screen plates for over twenty years. 15,000 original Autochrome plates are still preserved in the Society's archives. The collection contains unique photographs, including numerous Autochromes from Paris by Auguste Léon from 1925 and by W. Robert Moore from 1936 just before WWII.
In the U.S.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
's huge collection of American Pictorialist photographer
Arnold Genthe
Arnold Genthe (8 January 1869 – 9 August 1942) was a German-American photographer, best known for his photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and his portraits of noted people, from politicians and socialite ...
's work, 384 of his autochrome plates were among the holdings as of 1955.
The
George Eastman Museum
The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...
in Rochester, N.Y. has an extensive collection of early colour photography, including Louise Ducos Du Hauron's earliest autochrome images and materials used by the Lumière brothers.
Bassetlaw Museum
The Bassetlaw Museum is a museum in Retford, Nottinghamshire which documents the history of North Nottinghamshire from the earliest times to the present day. It is situated on Grove Street, Retford.
History
The Bassetlaw Museum was created in 1 ...
in
Retford
Retford (), also known as East Retford, is a market town in the Bassetlaw District in Nottinghamshire, England, and one of the oldest English market towns having been granted its first charter in 1105. It lies on the River Idle and the Chesterfie ...
, Nottinghamshire holds a collection of over 700 autochromes by
Stephen Pegler
Stephen Pegler (1852–1937) was the son of the founder of the Northern Rubber Company, Alfred Pegler. He was an industrialist and pioneer in the rubber industry, as well as a photographer. His early colour photographs (autochromes) are now kept ...
. This includes a collection of over 100 plates purchased by the museum in 2017 thanks to the generosity of local individuals and organisations. The images cover a range of subjects from still lifes, posed studies, local people and landscapes, and his travels abroad, and were taken between 1910 and the early 1930s. The Pegler collection of autochromes is thought to be the largest collection of autochromes by one photographer in Britain today.
The Royal Horticultural Society, UK has among the earliest colour photographs of plants and gardens taken by amateur photographer William Van Sommer (1859 - 1941), including of RHS Garden Wisley taken around 1913.
Commercial use
One of the first books published with color photography used this technique. The 12 volumes of "
Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries, Their Practical Application" included 1,260 color photographs and a chapter on how this process worked.
In the early 1900s
Ethel Standiford-Mehling
Ethel Standiford-Mehling (née Conway; 1871–1963) was an American artist and photographer.
Biography
Ethel Conway was born in Jackson County, Indiana on January 3, 1871.
She studied to be a teacher, but instead apprenticed to a photog ...
was an experimental photographer and artist and owner of the Standiford Studio in Louisville, Kentucky. She was commissioned by Louisville artist and art patron Eleanor Belknap Humphrey to create an autochrome diascope of her two oldest children. Both the autochrome photograph of the Humphrey children and the diascope mirror viewing device, which closes into itself in a leather-bound case similar in size and appearance to a book, are well preserved and still viewable in 2015. Ethel Standiford-Mehling later moved her Louisville enterprise Standiford Studios to Cleveland, Ohio, and it is not known if any other examples of her autochrome diascopes still exist.
Vladimír Jindřich Bufka
Vladimír Jindřich Bufka (16 July 1887, Olomouc-Pavlovičky – 23 May 1916, Prague) was a Czech photographer and popularizer of photography as well as an important exponent of pictorialism in Czech photography during the early 20th century. Bufk ...
was a pioneer and popularizer of Autochrome in
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...
.
Neo-Autochromists
There has been a revival of interest in the process by some, including a few groups in France working with original Lumière machinery and notes. One such recreation is a series of images from 2008 by the French photographer Frédéric Mocellin.
The British multimedia artist
Stuart Humphryes
Stuart Humphryes (born 10 December 1969) is an English multimedia artist for print, film and television, and a social media content creator, chiefly known for his work enhancing early colour photography. He first rose to prominence colourising ...
has helped popularise the medium via his autochrome enhancement work in magazines, newspapers and on-line platforms, with over 200,000 followers on his autochrome enhancement Twitter feed
In popular culture
*The 2006 film ''
The Illusionist'' tried to recreate the look of Autochrome, although apparently basing that "look" on published reproductions rather than on actual Autochrome plates.
*Modern
image sensor
An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of curr ...
s in digital cameras most commonly use a
Bayer filter
A Bayer filter mosaic is a color filter array (CFA) for arranging RGB color filters on a square grid of photosensors. Its particular arrangement of color filters is used in most single-chip digital image sensors used in digital cameras, camco ...
, which works in essentially the same way as the colored starch grains in an Autochrome plate—by breaking up the image into microscopically small color-filtered elements. In physical arrangement, however, the Bayer filter mosaic much more closely resembles the regular geometric pattern used in other color screen plates of the Autochrome era, such as the Paget and Finlay plates.
Gallery
File:Taj Mahal 1921.JPG, An Autochrome of the Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal (; ) is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan () to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mu ...
reproduced in '' The National Geographic Magazine'', March 1921.
File:Paris 1925 59878912.jpg, An Autochrome of the pavilion of Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
in Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
1925.
File:Gustaf Adolfs torg 1934.jpg, An Autochrome of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
, Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
, 1934.
File:Percy-MacKaye-Alwyn-Genthe-diascope.jpeg, Mirror view in a diascope of a 1913 Autochrome of Percy MacKaye
Percy MacKaye (1875–1956) was an American dramatist and poet.
Biography
MacKaye was born in New York City into a theatrical family. His father, Steele MacKaye, was a popular actor, playwright, and producer, while his mother, Mary, wrote a dr ...
, photographed by Arnold Genthe
Arnold Genthe (8 January 1869 – 9 August 1942) was a German-American photographer, best known for his photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and his portraits of noted people, from politicians and socialite ...
.
File:Stockholmsutställningen 1930 Villa 48.jpg, House in Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
, Autochrome, 1930.
File:Autochrome of Mark Twain.jpg, Autochrome portrait of Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
, 1908.
File:Autochrome Price List pamphlet - front (scan).jpg, Autochrome Price List pamphlet - front (scan)
File:Autochrome Price List pamphlet - reverse (scan).jpg, Autochrome Price List pamphlet - reverse (scan)
See also
*
Dufaycolor
Dufaycolor is an early British additive colour photographic film process, introduced for motion picture use in 1932 and for still photography in 1935. It was derived from Louis Dufay's Dioptichrome plates, a glass-based product for colour still ...
*
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky
Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky ( rus, Сергей Михайлович Прокудин-Горский, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪxəjɫəvʲɪtɕ prəkudʲin ˈɡorskʲɪj, a=ru-Prokudin-Gorskii.ogg; – September 27, 1944) was a Ru ...
References
External links
1907-1935: Universal Polychrome OverviewAutochrome: Beauty in Colored Pointillism''Dawn of Colour'' (includes original instruction booklet (1908))National Media Museum
The National Science and Media Museum (formerly The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, 1983–2006 and then the National Media Museum, 2006–2017), located in Bradford, West Yorkshire, is part of the national Science Museum G ...
Photographs of World War I in colorThe Albert-Kahn Museum Official Web site
Autochromes(including World War I) et al. by
Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud (some errors in Autochrome historical information)
Autochromes from BelgiumAutochromes from the Mark Jacobs Collection
{{DEFAULTSORT:Autochrome Lumiere
Auguste and Louis Lumière
Color photography
Photographic processes
French inventions