Painting with the Machine: Autochrome Lumiere photography

I came across some Autochromes recently. (Shown below are my favorites.)

This process was the first color-processing technique (developed by brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere in 1903? 04? something like that.) Microscopic grains of potato starch, dyed in various colors, were dusted onto a glass plate before being covered by sensitive panchromatic silver bromide emulsion. Before light could reach this emulsion, it was filtered by the colored grains--the processing period was very lengthy but it could be executed using basic darkroom procedures. The photographer would then have a positive color image on glass. Remarkably, this is how color-photographs were made before color film was widely produced in the 30s. Pretty sick.

One of the scientists/inventors (Louis):

etc...

palace of horticulture, pan american exposition

wall street

This picture shows the device by which the frames were viewed: a 1913 shot by Arnold Genthe of actor Percy MacKaye, posing as poet Alwyn in his play Sanctuary: A Bird Masque. According to my sources, its plot (about slaughtered birds getting their revenge on the hunter) helped give the bird conservation movement momentum. I don't really like birds, but I do enjoy a good story about murder and vengeance. More on that in the next posting, maybe.