Tag Archives: early color photography

April 22, 2014 · 11:14 PM

Early 20th Century Russia in Color

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a Russian chemist who also dabbled in photography. He captured some extraordinary pictures of average Russian citizens in the years immediately preceding World War I. They’re even more fascinating because they’re in color. By the start of the 20^th century, photography had become a regular part of life for many people. But, color photography, in particular, was still a luxury. With limited materials and equipment, its practitioners had a small window of opportunity for snagging the natural color elements of their subjects. It’s one reason why early color photographs often look more like chalk drawings.

Prokudin-Gorskii studied the works of James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist who, in 1861, took the first known color photograph. Photographs were taken in standard black and white and then “colorized” with filters of the three primary colors: red, blue and green. The photos would be put through filters of the same three primary colors and then, projected onto a screen. People could view the final product by peering through an optical device called a chromoscope or a photochromoscope. The actual process is known as additive color, which involves the combination of two or more colors to create the perception of yet another color.

Here are just a handful of the many photographs Prokudin-Gorskii took during his travels across imperial Russia, including one of the legendary Leo Tolstoy and a self-portrait.

Peasant girls, 1909.

The Emir of Bukhara, 1911.

Lau-Dzhen-Dzhau, foreman of a tea factory in Chakva, ca. 1907-1915.

Melon vendor, 1911.

Group of Jewish children with a teacher, 1911.

Group of children, 1909.

Uzbek woman, ca. 1907-1915.

Dagestan couple, ca. 1907-1915.

A Sart (Turkestani) man, 1911.

“Three Generations”, 1910.

Turkmenistan man with camel, ca. 1907-1915.

A Zindan (prison), ca. 1907-1915.

Migrant family, ca. 1907-1915.

Workers harvesting tea, ca. 1907-1915.

Nomadic Kirghiz, 1911.

Pinkhus Karlinskii – Supervisor of Chernigov Floodgate, 1909.

Hay gathering, 1909.

Work at the Bakalskii Mine Pit, 1910.

Outside Petrozavodsk on the Murmansk Railway, 1915.

Monks at work, 1910.

Weighing section, ca. 1907-1915.

Hay storage, 1910.

Village of Kolchedan, 1912.

A view of Tiflis from the grounds of Saint David Church, ca. 1907-1915.

City of Tobol’sk from the Bell Tower of the Church of the Transfiguration, 1912.

Abandoned chapel near the city of Belozersk, 1909.

View of a monastery from the Solarium, 1910.

Shakh-i Zinde Mosque, 1911.

A stork in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, 1911.

Ekaterinin Spring, ca. 1907-1915.

Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, 1908.

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky self-portrait at the Korolistskali River, 1912.

Courtesy U.S. Library of Congress.

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March 9, 2014 · 11:57 PM

Neon in Color

This is the first known color photograph of a neon tube, taken around 1913. The man is John Norman Collie, a distinguished scientist, writer, artist, photographer and mountaineer born in England in 1859. He served as a professor of chemistry at the University College of London (UCL) from 1913 to 1928. UCL was founded in 1826 as the first institution of higher education open to anyone, regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic background.

He was the first to climb 71 peaks around the world, and has two mountains named after him, Sgurr Thormaid (Norman’s Peak) in Scotland, and Mount Collie in Canada. Collie was a pioneer in chemistry research. He also was instrumental in the development of the first X-ray in 1895. There is even some anecdotal evidence that Collie was Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration for the character of Sherlock Holmes.

In this picture, he’s perched next to a glowing neon gas discharge tube.

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July 13, 2012 · 11:54 PM

Color Photographs of Greece, 1920’s

A girl husks corn in a field on the Salonika Kozani Road, Microghouzi

A hunter lies under an olive tree on the island of Crete

A maid of Candia poses in costume

A man in national costume smokes a waterpipe, Crete

A man poses in the national costume of Crete

A muleteer stands in the woods in Crete

A peddler with his wares passes through the village, Gastouri, Corfu

A woman in traditional Greek dress knits sitting outside her home, Aivali

A woman poses in the national costume of Crete

A woman works outside her home in Crete

Actress in peasant dress from Thessaly

Artist from Mt. Athos stands next to painting of Saint Nicholas

Girls stand on a stairway of a house in a Greek fishing village, Benizze, Corfu

Peasant women, Delphic Festival

Prior and his monk stand next to well at Europulus monastery, Corfu

Three women pose with children on stone steps, Corfu

Three women sit and do needlework, Crete

Turkish refugees dry corn near site of Pella in the Macedonian plain

Two women with baskets used for gathering olives during harvest, Deka, Corfu

Women and girls in the garden of a country home, Deka, Corfu

Women filter water taken from riverside pools to use for drinking, near Jugoslavian Frontier

Young woman sitting in a garden of flowers, Corfu

Photographs courtesy Maynard Owen Williams, National Geographic.

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July 5, 2012 · 11:04 PM

1922 Kodachrome Test Film

In this test film made at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, NJ, in 1922, actress Mae Murray and others model costumes from the film The Light in the Dark in the first commercial use of 2-color Kodachrome.

1914 Kodachrome of George Eastman

This is a color portrait of George Eastman, the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company. It was taken by photographer Joseph D’ Anunzio on September 2, 1914, more than 20 years before Kodachrome film was introduced to the public. The photograph came to the Smithsonian Institute’s Photographic History Collection by accident. In 1969, several hundred portraits were donated to the collection by a single person. Among them were four 8” x 10” glass plates, described as Kodachromes taken in 1914. Unfortunately, two of the portraits, both of young women, arrived damaged. One had a cracked corner; the other had a crack in the glass plate from top to bottom. The donor apologized for packing the glass plates poorly and sent the color portrait of George Eastman by way of compensation.

“Kodachrome” is a type of color reversal film Kodak introduced in 1935. The company had at least 3 different processes that went by this name, the first in 1914. In the early years of the 20^th century, Eastman Kodak pursued the development of a simple color photography process that could be used by amateur photographers. Charles Mees, the first director of Kodak Research Laboratories, said that George Eastman was crazy about color.

The 1914 version was devised by John Capstaff, a member of Kodak’s research staff. To make a color image like the museum’s photograph, two 8” x 10” glass plates were sandwiched together. Two photos were taken at the same time by a special camera through green and orange-red filters that reversed one image with a mirror. After the negatives were developed the positive images were dyed green and orange-red and bound together with the emulsion sides face to face. Kodak stopped manufacturing Kodachrome in 2010, but its legacy continues as a hallmark of photography.

Norwegian Photocroms, 1890 – 1900

A photocrom is a colorized image produced from a black and white negative. The image is transferred onto lithographic printing plates and subsequently colorized; it’s essentially a photographic variant of chromolithography, which in turn, was a popular means for the mass printing of color lithographs from the 1870’s to the 1930’s. Hans Jakob Schmid of Switzerland developed the photocrom process in the 1880’s while working for a printing firm. It was all part of what was then the growing art of color photography. Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress.