The Art of the Autochrome: The Birth of Color PhotographyPhoto-historian John Wood ( The Daguerreotype ) here resonantly portrays a "more gracious naive" era in the art and craft of photography by focusing on turn-of-the-century photographers like Stieglitz, Steichen, Clarence White and Heinrich Kuhn, who employed autochrome, a particularly luminous starch-dye and glass-plate photographic color process. First presented in Paris in 1904 by the Lumiere brothers, autochrome has a nuance and fragility that seems to impose its own aesthetic on practitioners. In one example of the 75 included, Karl Struss's 1910 work, Boardwalk, L.I. , has a charm that eludes today's more glaring standards, in part, perhaps, because the muted softness inherent in the process mitigates the bright sunlight indicated by the numerous raised parasols. Wood's smart text also explains how the Photo-Secessionists, in their artistic and literary ferment, later rejected autochrome. Factual and evocative "Notes on the Plates" (far removed from their subjects by the antic tyranny of picture book design) would have benefited from same-page placement, thus enlightening--without distracting--the fortunate viewer. |
Contents
Secessions Sex and Tranquility | 17 |
Color Triumphant | 38 |
Returns | 56 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Alan Johanson Albert Kahn Albert Kahn Museum Alfred Stieglitz Alvin Langdon Coburn amateur American ANTONIN PERSONNAZ appeared ARNOLD GENTHE art photography artistic autochrome color autochrome exhibition Autochrome Plates Autochrome Process autochrome's autochromists beautiful British Journal Bulletin century Charles chromes Clarence Collection Colour Photography Supple Colour Photography Supplement contemporary critic daguerreotype EDUARD STEICHEN eyes Finland française de photographie Genthe's GERVAIS COURTELLEMONT gum prints Hauts-de-Seine HEINRICH KÜHN History of Photography imagery Impressionists J. B. WHITCOMB Journal of Photography Klimt Laurvik LEONID ANDREYEV light look modern Monet's Musée Albert Kahn National Geographic Society October painter paintings Paris Photo Photo-gazette 19 Photo-Secession Photo-Secessionists photographie des couleurs Photographische Photography 55 June pictorial plaques auto plaques autochromes portrait printed in British produced raphy reproductions Royal Photographic Society Salon Scott Secession Secessionists SEELEY Série Société française Steichen Studio Symbolism Symbolist tography Vienna Vienna Secession vision White Wilson's Photographic Magazine WLADIMIR SCHOHIN wrote York