Color Photographs From 1907 :: Autochrome and Pictorialism

The Art of Photography

Ted Forbes

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4.5 • 942 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2015

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

Autochrome Lumière was one of the first commercially available color processes. There were earlier processes, but Autochrome was very refined and "realistic" for the technology at the time. Using grains made of potato starch, these grains produced a 3 color space of Orange, Green and Violet to reproduce color. In the early years, Pictorialists embraced Autochrome and were fascinated by its results. But quickly, pictorialists rejected it because of its mechanica, "pre-made"l process and lack of hand control over the chemicals and techniques involved. Autochrome was produced until the 1940's, but its early years were the most interesting and prolific among photographers in the art world. Mervyn O’Gorman from Petapixel http://petapixel.com/2015/04/26/these-1913-autochrome-portraits-are-from-the-early-days-of-color-photography/ Books: Impressionist Camera: Pictorial Photography in Europe, 1888-1918 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1858943310/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1858943310&linkCode=as2&tag=thepublbroa-20&linkId=U4E64EZJAMYCS7ZQ Heinrich Kuhn: The Perfect Photograph http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3775725695/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=3775725695&linkCode=as2&tag=thepublbroa-20&linkId=H3LDYSF5LZBOJFMS Heinrich Kuehn and His American Circle: Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3791351966/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=3791351966&linkCode=as2&tag=thepublbroa-20&linkId=K7B6L3MW2TJTIT2O This episode is sponsored by QuickBooks Self-Employed. If you work for yourself, QuickBooks Self-Employed helps separate your business and personal expenses, estimate your federal quarterly taxes and more. Get a 30-day free trial at tryselfemployed.com/aop

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the art of photography. My name is Ted Forbes. In this video I want to take a look at early color process and I want to talk about autochrome process which became commercially available in about 1907.
0:11.0	About a month ago, Michael Zang from Petapixil ran an article on a British
0:14.8	photographer from the early 20th century by the name of Mervyn O'Gorman. And Mervyn
0:19.4	O'Gorman was a very interesting photographer and is really known best I've never seen any
0:24.1	of his other images but he is very famous for this set of images that he did of his
0:28.0	daughter Christina. They were shot in autochrome and there's a very haunting
0:31.5	quality to them when you look at these images.
0:33.7	The color is not reproduced to the true level that we're used to today with digital photography.
0:38.6	This was over a hundred years ago.
0:40.8	But what's really interesting about these are the way that that vivid red in
0:44.2	her clothes pops out and just this real nostalgic quality to these images. And he's
0:49.7	really well known for this set of images and it got me thinking you know it's
0:53.4	interesting because autochrome came along a lot earlier than what most of us
0:56.8	use is our point of reference for color photography. It kind of came it
1:00.8	became extremely popular,
1:02.5	and then it fell out of fashion,
1:03.8	and we didn't see color photography
1:05.4	come back into fashion until really the 1960s or 1970s.
1:09.4	And what happened in between?
1:10.8	I think that's a really interesting thing
1:12.4	to look at and
1:13.4	question a little bit. So I've done some research on this today and I want to
	...

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