did you know color photography was invented in 1904? i don't think i'd ever actually seen actual color photographs from so long ago, but i've just come across some, and they quite literally left me a little bit breathless. they make the century between us seem like perhaps a few days, or maybe a week at the very most. and not only that! --these pictures are so utterly gorgeous that i think i might explode.
"Photography’s earliest practitioners dreamed of finding a method for reproducing the world around them in color. Some nineteenth-century photographers experimented with chemical formulations aimed at producing color images by direct exposure, while others applied paints and powders to the surfaces of monochrome prints. Vigorous experimentation led to several early color processes, some of which were even patented, but the methods were often impractical, cumbersome and unreliable.see more here!
After decades of wishing for a practical color process, photographers were thrilled when Auguste and Louis Lumière announced the invention of the autochrome process. The Lumière brothers, inventors of the motion picture camera, presented their invention to the French Academy of Sciences in 1904. The process used a screen of tiny potato starch grains dyed orange-red, green and violet. Dusted onto a glass plate, the dyed grains were covered with a layer of sensitive panchromatic silver bromide emulsion. As light entered the camera, it was filtered by the dyed grains before it reached the emulsion. While the exposure time was very long, the plate could be processed easily by a photographer familiar with standard darkroom procedures. The result was a unique, realistic, positive color image on glass that required no further printing.
George Eastman House has significant holdings of autochromes, including over 3900 examples by amateur photographer Charles Zoller of Rochester, New York. The museum also holds autochromes by Edward Steichen among others."
-from the photoset description on flickr.
read more about the autochrome process here!
"The George Eastman House is the oldest photography museum in the world, housed in the former home of Mr. George Eastman, the so-called father of modern photography and founder of Eastman Kodak company." -flickr blog
5 comments:
We've been to the Eastman House a couple of times. Of course, we weren't as interested in the photography as you would be, but in the architecture. It is a grand house with the photo museum attached. What's really neat is that when we were dating 27 years ago, we went and the house was in disrepair and unfurnished. It is now restored with the furniture back!
Go! So many things to see and do in Western NY!
oh man! that's so neat that you've been there. i'd love to see it.
Annie, I actually do think we should go. I'd love to see it as well. Let's google it and see how far away it is and plan something...
Go to Niagara Falls too. Go to Canada(with passports) to the Peace Garden.
Eat Italian sausages from vendors in Rochester, go to the cemetery to see what famous people have been buried there. Go to the Erie Barge Canal. Eat Beef on Weck and chicken wings in Buffalo!
that is really amazing how real those photographs look. they make the people look like they really existed and wore those clothes and walked around just like us. bizarre! they're so precise.
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