Color Photography in the 19th Century and Early 20th Century: Sciences, Technologies, Empires

Identifying Finlay Color Photographs within the Matson Photograph Collection with Jan Hubička  

The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, housed at the Library of Congress, comprises a rich collection of photographs taken by the American Colony Photo Department and Matson Photo Service between 1898 and 1946. While the photographers were based in Jerusalem, the collection documents numerous locations across the Middle East and parts of Africa.

The collection was digitized in 2004-2005 by JJT, Inc. using an overhead Sinar 54 camera, capturing images at a high resolution for the time (approximately 5000 pixels on the long edge). All scans are available online at their full resolution.

In this talk, I will focus on the discovery of Finlay color negatives and transparencies within this archive. These were first noted in 2011 by Mark Jacobs, motivating work on the open-source tool Color-Screen, designed to reconstruct color from regular color screen processes used in early color photography. Recently, the Library of Congress re-scanned three selected negatives using a modern setup, revealing their full potential.

We believe we have all tools necessary to turn all Finlays in the collection into high-quality color photographs, and towards that, I implemented an automated tool ("robot FiFin") to FInd all FINlay plates in the digitized Matson Photograph Collection. Negatives and transparencies of Finlay color photographs, when not registered with their viewing screens, appear monochromatic and are nearly indistinguishable from standard black-and-white photographs to the naked eye. FiFin utilizes Fourier analysis to detect regularly repeating patterns characteristic of screen processes within the scans. Searching the Matson photograph collection catalog for "Finlay color" yields 189 results, not all of which were real color images. Manual attempts to find additional color images in the digital collection (over 22,000 negatives) were unsuccessful; however, FiFin analyzed the collection over 10 days (bounded by the download speed) and found 461 Finlay color photographs and 7 Dufaycolors.

I plan to cover the following topics:
 - A (very) brief introduction to the American Colony and their photographers.
 - An explanation of the Finlay color process and the progress made in digitally converting these negatives into color positives that approximate the original viewing experience achievable with the intended viewing screens.

•  A comparison of color reconstructions using the 2005 scans versus those based on the new, higher-quality scans.
• Discussion on digitizing Finlay color negatives and transparencies
• A discussion of FiFin
• A showcase of selected color photographs discovered, many of which were originally intended for publication in National Geographic Magazine. These relate to at least four articles:

1. Petra, Ancient Caravan Stronghold (Feb. 1935)
2. Bedouin Life in Bible Lands (Jan. 1937)
3. Where Early Christians Lived… (Dec. 1939), about ancient monasteries in Cappadocia, Turkey
4. Canoeing Down the Jordan (Dec. 1940) The largest set of photographs, however, was taken during a trip to the sources of the Nile, and the intended use of these images currently remains unclear.

I hope FiFin will be useful to find more early color photographs in large collections, and I hope in the follow-up discussion we can identify good candidates for further exploration.

I would like to thank the staff (both current and former) of the Library of Congress, in particular Lynn Brooks, Micah Messenheimer, Phil Mitchel, Thomas Rieger, and Helena Zinkham, for the amazing work that made this research possible. I am grateful for the opportunity to view the original photographs and for receiving new, high-quality scans of sample negatives.

 

Biography

Jan Hubička  is following on from his presentation to the group on Tuesday, February 20, 2024 on Understanding Colors of Dufaycolor  and Tuesday, December 19, 2023 when he spoke on Digitizing Paget, Finlay and Dufaycolor photographs at National Geographic Society.  He is an associate professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics, software developer at SUSE LINUX s.r.o. and also a co-founder and a co-director of Šechtl and Voseček Museum of Photography in Tábor, Czech Republic. His interest in early color photography was sparked by Autochromes taken by his great grandfather, Josef Jindřich Šechtl. In 2006 he organized exhibition of early color photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky (first in Europe except for Moscow) for which he made his own tool composing scans of the separation negatives. In 2007 he organized exhibition of (reproductions of) Czech Autochromes which got him into contact with American collector of early color photography, Mark Jacobs. He helped to digitize important part of Mark Jacobs' collection and in 2012 organized exhibition “When the World Turned to Color Early Color Photography from the Mark Jacobs Collection”. Work on regular color screen processes started in 2011 for exhibition of photographs from the American Colony Collection where Mark Jacobs identified negatives for Finlay color process. He also co-organized two international workshops on early color photography, "Legacy of three-color photography" in 2008 and "Space, Color, Motion" in 2013.

Literature

•  Web resources:
  • Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection (Prints and Photographs collections, Library of Congress)
    https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html
    Catalogue of the Matson Photograph Collection with access to all high-resolution scans.  Search for "Finlay color negative"
  • Digitizing the collection
    https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/digitizing.html
    Information about digitization of the Matson Photograph Collection provided by the Library of Congress
  • American Colony in Jeursalem, 1870 to 2006 (Digital Collections, Library of Congress)
    https://www.loc.gov/collections/american-colony-in-jerusalem/about-this-collection/
    A rich source of digitized documents concerning the American Colony
  • Color-Screen Wiki
    https://github.com/janhubicka/Color-Screen/wiki
    Webpage of our project; still under construction.
  • Timeline of Historical Color Photography and Film: Finlay Positive Color Screen / Finlaychrome
    https://filmcolors.org/timeline-entry/39408/
• Publications:
  • Tom Powers: Jerusalem’s American Colony and Its Photographic Legacy
    https://israelpalestineguide.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/jerusalems_american_colony-_its_photographic_legacy.pdf
  • Geoffrey Barker, Jan Hubička, Mark Jacobs, Linda Kimrová, Kendra Meyer, Doug Peterson: Finlay, Thames, Dufay, and Paget color screen process collections: Using digital registration of viewing screens to reveal original color, 2nd Edition of the Conference “Colour Photography and Film: analysis, preservation, and conservation of analogue and digital materials” 2022
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.16076
  • Jan Hubička, Linda Kimrová, Kensi Klaeser, Sara Manco, Doug Peterson. Digital analysis of early color photographs taken using regular color screen processes, Color and Colorimetry Multidisciplinary Contributions 17 (2023), 241-248
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.09631
  • Linda Kimrová. Digital processing of early colour photography, Bachelor thesis, defended 2024.
    https://dspace.cuni.cz/discover?scope=%2F&query=Kimrov%C3%A1&submit=

Jan Hubička, Linda Kimrová, Melichar Konečný: Understanding colors of Dufaycolor: Can we recover them using historical colorimetric and spectral data?, arXiv:2501.06216v1
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06216v1

Spectral Colors: Peeping and Projecting Spectacular Reality, 1890–1920s

Frederic E. Ives (American, 1856-1937) first patented a composite three-color photographic process called the Krōmskōp Photochromoscope in 1894. This presentation will provide an outline of Ives and his various 3-color composite color devices, both stereographic and its projection counterpart, as he attempted to commercialize the Krōmskōp in the United States and in Britain in the 1890s. This so-called “Natural Color” process was exceedingly complex and hardly practicable for most amateurs. Yet, Ives’s Krōmskōp is productively viewed as a case study to consider the relationship between reality and fantasy in the color image as it was experienced in the enclosed color stereoscopic, and its translation as a projected, synthesized color image in collective viewing occasions. Recasting the familiar as spectacular and the fantastic as tangibly real, the spectral arrangements of red, green, and blue filters configured by lantern projectors and stereoscopic viewers presented its image as an event experienced in space and time with its viewer. 

Rachel Lee Hutcheson, PhD is a Lecturer at Columbia University and Cooper Union in New York. Her research interests include histories of photography, film and video, and media theory. Her dissertation, “Natural Color Photography, 1890-1920: Technology, Gender, Colonialism,” engages with the relationship between color, color vision, and photo-filmic technology at the turn of the twentieth century. Part of this research has been published in Grey Room (Summer, 2024) and 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (Summer, 2025); her writing on contemporary art has appeared in Millennium Film Journal. She has presented her work at the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University, the European Research Council project Chromotope, and at the IKKM in Weimar, Germany. Rachel is presenting on color stereography at the upcoming 34th International Panorama Council Conference in Lisbon. Her research has been supported by the Library of Congress, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the Mellon Humanities International Travel Fellowship. She has degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Suggested Reading:

Rachel Wetzel, “Instinctive Genius: Frederic Eugene Ives & The Krōmscōp Color Photography    System,” Photo-Researcher 37 (2022), 40-55.

Rachel Hutcheson, “Coming Attraction: The Event of Color, Techniques of Screening and Filtering in Early “Natural” Color Film and Photography,” Grey Room 96 (2024), 6-29.

Painterly Still Lifes and Belle Époque Aesthetics in Finland – Wladimir Schohin’s Autochromes

Wladimir Schohin (1862–1934) was a Finnish-born Russian merchant as well as Finland’s most accomplished pictorialist and autochromist. Schohin could be described as a well-kept secret in the history of color photography, as not much is known about him and even less has been written in English. In one of the only English treatises on Schohin from 1993 John Wood went as far as to write: “-- on the basis of his autochrome work alone [Schohin] could be considered one of the greatest photographers of the century.” The majority of Schohin’s surviving autochromes were donated to the Finnish Museum of Photography by Finland’s oldest photoclub AFK in 2024. The museum’s curator of collections Max Fritze lays out the context of early Finnish photographic art and presents select autochromes from the collection.

Max Fritze (b. 1988) is a Finnish art historian. He has been a curator of collections at the Finnish Museum of Photography since 2019. Fritze is especially interested in discourses surrounding early Finnish photographic art. He has researched Finnish pictorialism and published several texts on the topic, most notably Ideas about Ennobled Photography: Pictorialism in Finland, 1897–1930 (abstract in English) in The Finnish Museum of Photography’s publication Piktorialismi – Valokuvataiteen synty (Pictorialism – the Dawn of Photographic art), 2022.

Reading material on Schohin in English:

• Wood, John: The art of the Autochrome – The Birth of Color Photography, 1993. Iowa City : University of Iowa press. p. 41–43.
• Carpelan, Bert: Wladimir Schohin: an Early Color Master. The Frozen Image – Scandinavian Photography, 1982. Walker Art Center. - New York : Abbeville. p.120–123.

Online reading material in Finnish (feel free to use Deepl to translate them):

• Frigård, Johanna: Autochrome-kuumeen epikriisi, 2014. Tahiti 2/2014.
• Wladimir Schohin at the Finnish National Biography website
• Wladimir Schohin’s Autochromes. Website of the Finnish Museum of Photography.

“I never understood his hate”:  Arthur Traube’s Uvachrome in Europe and Beyond 
A talk by Dr. Hanin Hannouch (Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna), dedicated to the memory of the late Mark Jacobs. 

In one of his letters to his colleague German photochemist and would-be Nazi historian Erich Stenger (1878-1957), German Jewish photochemist Arthur Traube (1852-1956) describes his relationship to his teacher Adolf Miethe (1862-1927) saying “I never understood his hate”. Known for having co-patented panchromatic sensitization in 1902 together with Miethe, Traube seems to have all but swiftly disappeared from the history of color photography. 
Relying on extant primary sources and photography collections scattered across Europe, my new research project not only centers on Traube’s oeuvre, positioning him as a photochemist and entrepreneur in his own right, but also on his life as Jewish scientist who only survived thanks to his hurried exile to the USA. My talk starts by elucidating Traube’s life and studies in Berlin, seeing them also through the prism of his Jewishness and the hate he faced as a result. I will also explicate his use of dye mordanting in two of his photographic processes, Diachromie as of 1906 and Uvachrome as of 1922, focusing on the three Uvachrome companies he was involved in to various degrees (in Munich, Vienna, and Biel). Then, I will reveal what happened to Uvachrome, both the technology and the brand, after Traube was forced to move to the other side of the Atlantic. 

A greater understandings of colour objects in museum and heritage collections: Digitising Autochromes
The Autochrome Lumière was the first commercially successful colour photography process. Autochromes pose many conservation considerations. Notably, autochromes are highly light sensitive and the colours are prone to fading. For these reasons, many international public institutions do not display their autochrome collections and instead exhibit facsimile copies. There are also restrictions around public access and digitisation processes. These practices underscore the need for non-invasive methods to provide public access and insight without compromising preservation.
The EU project PERCEIVE (http://perceive-horizon.eu http://perceive-horizon.eu/>) seeks to form greater understandings of colour objects in museum and heritage collections. The V&A’s collection of over two thousand autochrome plates is the basis for a study looking at early colour photography. At the Colourlab at NTNU, spectral imaging is being used to separate the overlapping visual elements of autochrome plates—the optical properties of color dyes and the photographic image itself. This information will be used for a range of results, which will include the virtual restoration of damaged autochromes and a consideration of the potential of digital heritage.
To conclude, we will discuss our survey of current digitisation practices relating to autochromes. This information will inform ways to address the unique obstacles that autochrome plates presents in terms of their digitisation.
Speakers:

• Giorgio Trumpy: Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (https://www.ntnu.edu/colourlab#/view/about) and founding member of Scan2Screen GmbH (scan2screen.com http://scan2screen.com/>). Imaging Scientist with solid experience in bridging the gap between art and science. Fields of expertise span from optics to spectroscopy, from colorimetry to image processing, from heritage conservation to visual arts.
• Catlin Langford: Curator, writer and researcher specialising in photography. She has held curatorial and teaching positions at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Collection Trust, and Royal College of Art. Her debut publication ‘Colour Mania: Photographing the World in Autochrome’ (Thames & Hudson/V&A) was published in 2022. She is presently working with the V&A’s autochrome collection as part of PERCEIVE.

We (Janine + Hanin) are going on a break this December and will be back with a vengeance in January 2026. As a present to the members of this exciting, energizing, and downright colorful working group, we are preparing a giveaway game. So stay tuned to the newsletters we send you and who knows what Santa Clause will be sending you this holiday season!
We look forward to seeing you all in January and to enjoy a wonderful new year together filled with niche color processes, even nich-er scientists and off-the-beaten-track collections.

Group hugs from Vienna + Oxford,
Hanin + Janine

NOVEMBER SPECIAL: Focus Session
Looking forward to 2025 a new year filled with enthusiasm, inspiration and perspectives on early color photography, Hanin  & Janine will present  an informal session organized as follows:
We will open with a short presentation reflecting how participants in this group and their work point towards poignant and pertinent arguments expanding field of research of science, technology and color photography in the 19th & early 20th Century.
After which, we invite you to share your early color photographs and ephemera with the group.  People interested in sharing write to us telling us that they would like to share and what they would like to share.
After which, the session will be open for questions and discussions in a relaxed setting whilst Hanin poses questions and tells her jokes. This will be a valuable opportunity to get to know each other better and continue building our color photography community.
 

19th century experiments in color micrography by Fernand Monpillard with Nicole Liao
My project is interested in the use of new synthetic dyes in the life sciences and how this would have shaped color and photo media in the 19th century. I will be looking at the earliest experiments in color micrography by little known French photographer Fernand Monpillard, who seized upon synthetic color’s chemical and visual properties to visualize biological structures and microscopic organisms. While there was no shortage of atlases featuring micrography in the wake of photography’s invention, Monpillard and zoologist Étienne Rabaud’s Atlas d'histologie normale: Principaux tissus et organes (1900) appears to be the first scientific atlas of its kind to print its photographed specimens in color. I explore how this incorporation of color forces us to reconsider assumptions around “mechanical objectivity” and the active role corporeal relations between viewer and image, between specimen and technology, play in the relay of information. Monpillard’s other unpublished monochrome, bichrome and trichrome prints of parasites, insects, embryos and minerals will also be analyzed in relation to his written articles on the technical art of micrography. Thinking through the material and technical execution of Monpillard’s process, I ask how his visualization of “living” tissues and organisms might have intersected with what Jacques Loeb referred to as “Technology of Living Substance” in the lab wherein man can manipulate living nature to his will.
Biography:
Nicole Liao is currently a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. Her interests lie at the intersection of the history of photography and film, science and technology studies, and aesthetics. Her dissertation will foreground the importance of colour in theories of evolution and biology as scientist sought to reveal, magnify and animate life processes in the latter half of the 19th century. Prior to pursuing a doctorate, Nicole worked as an artist and designer in the architectural field.
 
Bibliography:
Allen, Grant. The Colour-Sense in Insects: Its Development and Reaction. London s.n., 1879.
Breidbach, Olaf. “Representation of the Microcosm: The Claim for Objectivity in 19th Century Scientific Microphotography.” Journal of the History of Biology 35, no. 2 (2002): 221–5
Canguilhem, Georges. “The Living and Its Milieu.” Translated by John Savage. Grey Room 3, no. 3 (2001): 7–6.
Donné, Alfred. Cours de microscopie complémentaire des études médicales: anatomie microscopique et physiologie des fluides de l’économie. J.-B. Baillière, 1844. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/nbp87rbk/items?canvas=35
Kennedy, Meegan. “‘Throes and Struggles … Witnessed with Painful Distinctness’: The Oxy-Hydrogen Microscope, Performing Science, and the Projection of the Moving Image.” Victorian Studies 62, no. 1 (2019): 85–118.
Monpillard, Fernand. Appareil de photomicrographie. Paris: Impr. nationale, 1903.
———. Écrans et plaques orthochromatiques. Paris: Impr. nationale, 1907. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k34120132.
———. Note sur la photographie indirecte des couleurs appliquée à la microphotographie. Paris: Impr. nationale, 1900.
Rabaud, Etienne, and Fernand Monpillard. Atlas d’histologie normale : principaux tissus et organes. Paris: Georges Carré et C. Naud, 1900. http://archive.org/details/atlasdhistologie00raba.
 
 

Looking Over the Over Looked - Lesser-known Colour Photography Processes with Janine Freeston
Janine will be sharing a work in progress that focuses knowledge exchange pertaining to lesser-known screen plate processes in particular illustrations of screen plates presented during a 1912 slide lecture that point to the complexities of launching nascent technologies and  the importance of further interrogation of how and why some processes forefronted commercial interest and eclipsed others. Along with other researchers, Janine is interested in learning more about new lesser/unknown processes and their unique attributions.
Pre-1914, seeing examples of color photography processes was limited to photographic exhibitions, photographic studio windows or disappointingly photomechanically transposed for very expensive publications which inherently lacked the luminosity of the backlit originals. Much was written in black and white about various processes in the photographic press, but imagining how they looked in comparison to each other was impossible. Consequently, many nuanced nascent solutions were swiftly eclipsed by the more commercially successful competitors. As a result, little is known about many less successful processes and their contributions to the incremental improvements that innovators explored while seeking to achieve simple and economic color photographs. The dissemination of information about early colour photography rested on the enthusiasm of manufacturers’ representatives and  amateur photographers’ exhibiting, presenting and demonstrating to camera clubs and reporting in press articles. Unfortunately these events usually confined themselves to one process at a time making comparisons between them impossible. This conundrum was addressed at the First Colour Photography Exhibition in Britain and the subsequent founding of the Society of Colour Photographers who actively circulated examples of members work and feedback from specialists work in the portfolios, leading to the publication of didactic guides and descriptive critiques in the monochrome photographic press leaving readers to try and imagine the ease of production and the fidelity of various processes. 
Reference Material
Pénichon, Sylvie. Twentieth Century Colour Photographs: The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London ; New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2013.
Wall, E. J. History of Three Color Photography. First. Boston, Mass., USA: American Photographic Publishing Company, 1925.
Friedman, Joseph Solomon. History of Colour Photography. 2nd ed. American Photographic Publishing Company, 1945.
König, Dr, E., and E. J. Wall. Natural Colour Photography, with Color Chart, Test-Results, and Diagrams. First. London: Dawbarn and Ward Ltd., 1906.
Rendall, H. E. Colour Photography. First Edition. RPS, 1931.
Utterback, James M. Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School, 2006.
Sobieszek, Robert A. Color as Form; A History of Colour Photography-Exhibition Catalogue from the International Museum of Photography George Eastman House. George Estman House Rochester New York: George Eastman House, 1982.
Biography
Janine Freeston is an Independent Researcher, writer, practitioner, tutor, lecturer, consultant and co-convener of this CHSTM Working Group. She specializes in early color photography and photographic processes, currently researching the associated technological and litigious aspects of trichromatic technology up to the 1930s. Her completed thesis Colour photography in Britain, 1906-1932: Exhibition, Technology, Commerce and Culture - the Dynamics that Shaped its Emergence, will presently be available. Janine is currently co-authoring an undergraduate study guide to understanding and applying research methods for photography in cultural studies and coordinates annual research symposiums on behalf of the Royal Photographic Society Historical Group with the Senior Lecturer in Photography at Wolverhampton University for academics, writers and collectors at any stage of their research.

Re-discovering the Joly screen process through making art as practice research with
Alan Phelan
 
The Joly screen process was the first screen plate commercially introduced for colour images. Patented in 1894 and introduced in 1895 by Irish physicist John Joly, the process had a very short life and was out of use within a decade. It did however prove Louis Ducos du Hauron's colour theories in making a full-colour image via a red, green and blue filter, where a striped screen is placed in front of black & white film on exposure and then display. The process was subsumed by the autochrome and largely forgotten and unused subsequently.
Over the past 6 years I have revived the process and used it as part of a series of exhibitions. My approach is far from scientific and far less detailed that the original but I have managed to make these additive photographs using analogue methods (albeit with a digitally produced striped screen). I have remained true to the process and exhibit the film from the camera, not reproductions as I reverse process the sheet film used. The method is precarious using analogue chemistry and the results are unpredictable but stunning when it works. The small photographs function like illuminated miniatures, and demand a different engagement from that of contemporary photography. A parallax effect adds an extra analogue kick where the colour shifts as the RGB screen lines mis-align.
As the process was not much used I have sought to create a new visual history that the process never had a chance to have. This has involved traversing many centuries and media, exploring a wide range of images, themes, and concepts. The difficulty in explaining the process in a digital world has also led me to use the RGB colour palette in a variety of installations, sculptures and interventions.
I will discuss the original process, my version of it and how I have used it in different art contexts. The Joly screen process is lacking serious academic research and I hope my work can help in unlocking some of the barriers that have left the process to dark fade into obscurity.
 
Reading Material:
* Essay by Joanne Laws in response to the exhibition Red Lines, 2019 at The Dock, Carrick-on Shannon, Ireland
https://alanphelan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/JOANNE_LAWS_A_response_to_an_exhibition_Red_Lines_Alan_Phelan_1-min.pdf
* PDF published as a USB card documenting the work with the Dunboyne Flower and Garden Club in making floral Joly screen photographs, 2019-2020
http://www.alanphelan.com/AlanPhelanJOLY2020.21.pdf
* Review of the exhibition Echos toujours plus sourds (echos are always more muted) at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, 2019 by Gilles Renault for Libération
https://www.liberation.fr/images/2021/01/21/alan-phelan-dans-les-racines-oubliees-de-la-couleur_1818160/
English translation at https://alanphelan.com/associated-texts/echos-toujours-plus-sourds-2021/
 
Biography
 
Alan Phelan (born 1968 Dublin, Ireland) received BA, Dublin City University, 1989 and MFA, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, 1994 on a Fulbright and John F Kennedy Fund scholarships. He worked at the George Eastman House subsequently and obtained a Certificate in Photographic Preservation and Archival Studies. It was there that he first came cross Joly screens as a small Irish connection in the vast collections of George Eastman Museum. He has exhibited Joly screen photographs at Casino Marino Dublin (2024); Molesworth Gallery Dublin (2021 and 2023); PhotoIreland Festival Dublin (2021 and 2022); Centre CultureI Irlandais Paris (2021); Void Derry (2020); Royal Hibernian Academy Dublin (2020); and The Dock Carrick-on-Shannon (2019). His practice that began in photography has extended into many different media and mediums with a focus on interpretation, language, and collaborations with other artists, writers, and curators. His work has recently been concerned with queer counterfactual temporalities, where histories are revised, recovered and reassembled into artworks and scenarios. Other solo exhibitions include: The Hugh Lane Gallery (2016); Oonagh Young Gallery (2015 and 2013); Golden Thread Belfast (2014); The Black Mariah Cork (2011); Irish Museum of Modern Art (2009); and Mother's Tankstation Dublin (2007). Group exhibitions/projects include: Self-Determination; IMMA (2023); MOE Communal (2023); TONE/TOLD/TEXT/TALK (2022-23), TBGS, RHA, DHG, HLG Dublin and Libairie Yvon Lambert Paris; CCA Derry (2021); Garage Rotterdam (2020); EVA International (2016); Bonn Kunstmuseum (2015); Treignac Projet (2014); Bozar Brussels (2013); Feinkost Berlin (2007); The Whitney Museum of American Art (2004).
 

 Peppers Ghost. The Archive & Performance with Bronwyn Lace and Anna Seiderer
 How do we begin to look at an image collectively? What are the ways in which a visual archive – entrenched in the heavy histories of colonialism and rendered silent through an extractive approach to photography – can begin to speak? In provoking and surfacing the narratives embedded in these archives, is it music, performance, improvisation and collaboration that can become vital tools for re-reading images in a contemporary way? These are questions Lace and Seiderer continue to ask themselves in their ongoing collaboration as artists, activators and researchers across various spaces and platforms. Using experimental, performative and playful tools for exchange and dialogue between artists and thinkers whose practices are devoted to the material traces of history the two are interested in deepening their artistic and academic reflections on the issues of remediation, analysis and reuse of filmic materials produced in controversial and complex contexts.
 
Within this process Lace and Seiderer have been invited to engage with a collection of photographs from the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn in Paris. The photographs, which are autochromes – the first photographic process that allowed for the reproduction of colour – were made in Dahomey (now Benin) in 1930 and are part of a larger project, the Archives of the Planet, funded by French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860-1940). Lace and Seiderer will speak about how the projection of digital versions of these autochromes into a Pepper’s Ghost, a 19th- century theatrical illusion mechanism that makes use of a half-silvered mirror, projection and live performance – became a hugely productive tool for engaging with – through music, dance, drawing, live narration and more – the photographs, that might have remained otherwise silent and inactive in the archive.
 
The two will share the way in which free spirited, open and collective responses to images through myriad sounds, gestures, and materials can become tools for layering, agitating, rescripting and expanding upon the people, places, landscapes, rituals and knowledge systems represented in the images and films. In engaging the archive in an active, collective, and interdisciplinary manner, new possibilities and tactics are able to emerge. Collapsing and unfolding time through performance becomes a means of destabilising the authority of an image. De-objectifying and dehumanising those present in the image. The act of embracing the incidental and the fragmentary becomes a way of working around the gaps and mistranslations in the historical narratives that accompany these images, pursuing instead the emergent material traces surfaced through the body, the voice, the ensemble. The introduction of language – be it linguistic, musical, or visual – can allow one to give a voice to a silenced image, while the use of physical performance and gesture can challenge, animate and expand upon a frozen or recreated moment.
 
Bronwyn Lace is a visual and performance artist. Site specificity and responsiveness are central to her practice. Lace’s focus is on the collaborative relationships between art and other fields, including physics, history, museology, philosophy and literature.
In 2016 Lace joined William Kentridge in the founding and animating of the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, South Africa, today Lace is the Centre’s steering force and its international liaison arm. In 2020 Lace co-founded The Zone: a collective that calls for the development of an entirely novel transdisciplinary and deliberative approach to inquiry and curation across the arts and sciences and beyond based in Vienna, Austria. Lace lives and works between Johannesburg and Vienna.
 
Anna Seiderer is senior lecturer at the Department of Arts at University of Paris 8/Vincennes and researcher at the laboratory Arts of Images and contemporary arts [AIAC/EPHA]. She’s member of the editorial board of the journal Slaveries & Post~Slaveries. She has just
published Traces du dé/colonial dans les collections de musées, avec Margareta von Oswald, Félicity Bodenstein et Damiana Otoiu (eds.), Horizon d’attente, Paris (2024) and curated Moving archives at Villa Medici in the frame of the short residency of Academy of Traces. Together
with Bronwyn Lace, she’s running the seminar Arts|Archives|Performances, questioning the performativity of colonial film and photographic archives.
 
Reading links
https://lessgoodidea.com/thinking-in-2020-2024#/thinking-in-archives-2022/
https://lessgoodidea.com/how#/may-2023-how-the-peppers-ghost/
https://journals.openedition.org/slaveries/801

Evolution of Conservation Approaches for Autochromes: Insights from Clara von Waldthausen and Luisa Casella
Autochromes present unique challenges due to the specific characteristics of their material composition. Over time, few conservators and conservation scientists have dedicated efforts to understand and address these challenges, resulting in a nuanced evolution of conservation approaches. This discussion explores that research, focusing on the contributions of Clara von Waldthausen and Luisa Casella within this landscape.
Historically, conservation efforts for autochromes targeted issues like rapid light fading and delamination of the image layer. Common practices were limited to replacing cover glasses and rebinding damaged plates. Key figures such as Bertrand Lavédrine, Jean-Paul Gandolfo, and Peter Krause played pivotal roles by conducting historical research and characterizing materials and deterioration mechanisms. Lavédrine's 1991 study on autochrome dyes underscored their low light stability, influencing widely adopted guidelines against their display.
Building on this foundation, Clara and Luisa addressed practical concerns still faced by conservators. Starting in 2001, Clara collaborated with Bertrand Lavédrine to propose an effective consolidation method using solvent vapors, a sea-change moment in the treatment of these objects. In 2007, marking the autochrome's centennial, Luisa explored low-oxygen display methods to enable their safe exhibition. Although both Clara and Luisa’s research is over a decade ago, they remain the latest advances in conservation approaches to these objects.
This presentation will review Clara and Luisa’s research results, which exemplify innovative approaches in navigating the delicate balance between preservation and intervention strategies for these historical artifacts.
 
Clara C. von Waldthausen (she/her) holds a Master of Arts in Photograph Conservation from the University of Amsterdam.  She is lecturer in Photograph Conservation at the University of Amsterdam where she established the program in 2015. Clara also works in private practice at her Foto Restauratie Atelier VOF. There she works with museums and archives, giving advice, teaching workshops and performing condition surveys and conservation treatments. (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
 
Luisa Casella (she/ her) trained in Art Conservation at the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar in Portugal. She was an Advanced Residency Program in Photograph Conservation Fellow at George Eastman House/ Image Permanence Institute, and a Research Scholar in Photograph Conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has held photograph conservator positions at Luis Pavão, Lda., Harry Ransom Center, and West Lake Conservators. (Ithaca, New York, USA).
 

Caring for early chromogenic film: a methodological approach to understand its use and significance through Portuguese collections by Lénia Oliveira Fernandes
The history of colour photography shifted in the 1930s as the industry began researching the manufacture and use of chromogenic dyes. Transparencies on plastic film with this type of colourants yielded direct positive images, simplifying the process of obtaining, viewing, and reproducing images in full colour. A dynamic visual communication tool, colour slide film was distributed and adopted in many contexts. Over the years, and as other technologies took over, slide film started to make its way into numerous private and public collections worldwide.
Although an estimated 6 million colour slides became part of several Portuguese cultural institutions, little is known about their relationship with the global photographic industry. Collection surveys are taking place to learn more about these objects’ sociocultural context and material characteristics. To this point, it has been possible to ascertain that their use became more common after the 1950s, especially by professional photographers. Specific issues arose across institutions, which further motivate in-depth investigation into their characterization and preservation. The study of colour slide film is being complemented by documenting memories related to their use and attributed values, on both national and international levels.
This presentation will explore the transition of colour photography into chromogenic processes, focusing on early slide film (1930s-1950s) and the challenges presented by these materials. The main focus will be on objects found in Portuguese institutions, studied in the scope of the ongoing PhD project “Chromogenic film: Characterization, conservation and appreciation of case-studies in Portuguese collections” (ref. 2022.13036.BDANA). 
 
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Lénia Oliveira Fernandes is a PhD student at NOVA University Lisbon that is researching colour slide film in Portuguese collections, financed by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia). She is a photograph conservator whose professional experience is connected to the following institutions: Rijksmuseum, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft - Berlin, Arquivo e Biblioteca da Madeira, and Image Permanence Institute. She has been a volunteer in several cultural heritage associations, including APOYOnline – Association for Heritage Preservation of the Americas.
Buzit-Tragni, Claire, Corinne Dune, Lene Grinde, and Phillipa Morrison. 2005. “Coatings on Kodachrome and Ektachrome Films.” In Coatings on Photographs : Materials, Techniques, and Conservation, edited by Constance McCabe, 168–79. Washington, D.C.: American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Photographic Materials Group.
Mervis, Stanley H., and Vivian K. Walworth. 2004. “Color Photography 5-8.” In Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, edited by Jacqueline I. Kroschwitz and Arza Seidel, 5th ed., 19:231–72. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley-Interscience.
Pénichon, Sylvie. 2013. “Dye Coupling (or Chromogenic) Processes.” In Twentieth-Century Color Photographs: Identification and Care, 160–205. Los Angeles (CA): Getty Publications.
Shanebrook, Robert L. 2016. Making Kodak Film: The Illustrated Story of State-of-the Art Photographic Film Manufacturing. Expanded second edition. Rochester (NY): Robert L. Shanebrook.
Vernallis, Kayley. 1999. “The Loss of Meaning in Faded Color Photographs.” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 38 (3): 459–76.
Vicente, Filipa Lowndes. 2018. “A obra fotográfica de Helena Corrêa de Barros acordou.” News. PÚBLICO. December 2, 2018. https://www.publico.pt/2018/12/02/culturaipsilon/noticia/obra-adormecida-helena-correa-barros-acordou-1853110.
Wilhelm, Henry. 1993. The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures. 1st edition. Grinnell (IA): Preservation Publishing Company.

"Unidentified color positives in Slovak collections - Research and challenges" by Kitti Baráthová   
The main purpose of the presentation is to introduce my doctoral research on different color positive processes on transparent supports regarding Slovak collections. The focus is on additive and subtractive color techniques on various bases, such as glass, cellulose film sheets or film roll. The urgency of this topic lies mainly in the fact that Slovak collections do not have identified and correctly categorised these valuable pieces in their depositories, which can lead to sudden deterioration under wrong storage conditions. Extensive research on this topic is constantly carried out in the world, but publications of international literature are mostly in English and only limited information is accessible in Slovakia, which is not widely available for all. The lack of professional literature and higher education of museum staff are few of the problems I am facing. As a conservator I realised that revision of the collections is necessary, because proper identification is the first step of preventive care, appropriate storage conditions and conservation of these rare color positives is extremely important for their future preservation.
 
Target audience: Conservators/restorators, archivists, curators, museum studies
 
 
Mgr. art. Kitti Baráthová is a photograph conservator based in Slovakia. She is a  Department of Restoration and Conservation graduate at the Academy of Fine Arts and  Design (AFAD) in Bratislava who specialises in paper and photograph conservation. Since  2019 she has assisted at teaching at the Department of Restoration at AFAD in the  Photograph Conservation Studio, lecturing courses such as Historical Photographic  Techniques - Theory and Practice. In 2022, she started her PhD studies under the  supervision of Associate Professor Mgr. art. Janka Blaško Križanová ArtD. Her research  focuses mainly on color photographs on transparent supports. As a PhD student and a  private conservator, she actively participates in conferences and workshops and  collaborates with institutions on national and international projects. She attended  workshops such as the Twentieth-century Photographs - Identification and Care with  Sylvie Pénichon (2019, 2022), the Colour Photo & Film Conference in Florence (2022), the  Conservation Science, Technology and Industry conference in Bratislava (2023) and the  ICOM-CC Triennial Conference in Valencia (2023). Since 2019, Kitti Baráthová and Janka  B. Križanová have been working closely with Albertina Museum Wien (Austria) on an  ongoing international collaboration Daguerrotype Project, where they survey, conserve,  and preserve the vast daguerrotype collection of the museum. In November 2023, they  hosted a course within the DITAH Project Autumn School of Photograph Conservation in  St. Florian Abbey (Austria) with the European Research Centre for Book and Paper  Conservation-Restoration. Her abstract got accepted to the 2024 AIC-Annual Meeting in  Salt Lake City, where she will be also presenting her doctoral research within the  Photographic Materials session during May 2024. 

Literature/recommended readings:
• PÉNICHON, Sylvie: Twentieth-Century Color Photographs. The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, 2013.
• WILHELM, Henry: The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs. Preservation Publishing Company, Iowa, 1993.
• ROHRBACH, John: Color! American Photography Transformed. Amon Carter Museum, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2013.
• LAVÉDRINE, Bertrand – GANDOLFO, Jean-Paul: The Lumiére Autochrome. The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, 2013.
• LAVÉDRINE, Bertrand: A Guide to the Preventive Conservation of Photographs Collections. The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, 2003.
• NORRIS, Debra Hess – GUTIERREZ, Jennifer Jae: Issues in the Conservation of Photographs. The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, 2013.
• HIRSCH, Robert; ERF, Greg: Exploring Color Photography: From Film to Pixels. Elsevier Focal Press, 2011.
• FLUECKIGER, Barbara – HIELSCHLER, Eva – WIETLISBACH, Nadine: Color Mania, The Material of Color in Photography and Film, Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich, 2020.

The International Reach of Lippmann Photography
Lippmann photography aka interferential color photography generates direct positives on glass that are dazzling in brilliance and archival stability but which cannot be transferred unto paper. This exciting technical genesis meant, however, that opportunities for spectators, scientists, and photography aficionados to connect with Lippmann photography hinged on the physical photograph and on the use of projection devices, capable of megascopic projection, and were thus scarce! Also, lithographs and engravings failed to transmit its unique shimmering colors and its “jewel-like” quality. As a result, examining the international reach of Lippmann photography challenges historical studies that focus on the medium’s „circulation and mobility” through print culture, simply because printing a Lippmann plate was a dream, not an option.
This presentation addresses one dreamer’s attempt to “print the unprintable”; German engineer Hans Lehmann whose “one hit wonder” Lippmann print has so far received scant scholarly interest. My talk also investigates how, despite the lack of Lippmann prints, knowledge about the process circulated beyond Paris (where Gabriel Lippmann’s lab was located) through other forms of disclosure. Mapping how Lippmann photography reached Sweden, Argentina, and Russia etc. illuminates the international scholarly networks Lippmann was part of as well as the reception (both aesthetic and scientific) of his work.
 
 
Target Audience: Historians of physics, historians of science, French Studies, Global History
 
Dr. Hanin Hannouch (she/her) is Curator of analog and digital media at the Weltmuseum Wien where she is oversees the photography, film and sound collections and vice-president of the European Society for the History of Photography (ESHPh).
She is the editor of the first volume on interferential color photography "Gabriel Lippmann's Colour Photography: Science, Media, Museums" (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), PhotoResearcher’s special issue „Three-Color Photography around 1900: Technologies, Expeditions, Empires“ (vol.37, 2022), and the open-access journal Cinergie’s special issue titled “Destabilizing Histories: (Re-)appropriation in Photography and Cinema” (2020).
She was postdoctoral researcher at the Ethnologisches Museum - Berlin State Museums and at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz / Max-Planck-Institut where she investigated the colonial and imperial entanglements of color photography. She earned her PhD summa cum laude from IMT Lucca, Scuola Alti Studi (2017) with a thesis about Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein as art historian. She completed the international Masters in art history and museology (IMKM) at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris and the University of Heidelberg in Germany (2014). She has also earned a previous Masters (2012) and a Bachelors in European art history, focusing on art in the 20th century, both from Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik in Lebanon. She is currently writing her monograph titled “Color Photography in Imperial Germany”.
 
Recommended Readings: Please visit the ressource section in this group for all things Lippmann!
 
 
 

Understanding colors of Dufaycolor
Jan Hubička

Dufaycolor was an additive process of color photography introduced in 1932 for motion film and in 1935 for still photography (the same year as Kodachrome). It was the most advanced color screen process, but is under-appreciated today because the dyes in their emulsion tend to fade. In a previous talk I discussed the possibility of digital color reconstruction based on high resolution scans of original transparencies (ideally including an infrared channel) which makes it possible to reproduce the original colors.

In order to make the color reconstruction historically authentic, it is necessary to understand details of the process. I will discuss the historical method of printing the Dufaycolor color screen (reseau) and the properties of dyes used to produce it.  Since published data are incomplete, imprecise, and often contradicting each other, I implemented a full digital simulator of the process which makes it possible to turn the spectrum of light seen by the camera into the expected response of Dufaycolor film. I discuss lessons learned from the experiment and how that improves our understanding of the accuracy of color recordings.

There are three main goals of our project:
 1) We would like to find practical methods of digitizing early color photographs which faithfully and completely reproduce the physical object as it is today.
 2) We would like to digitally restore the colors to their appearance at the time of original processing.
 3) We would like to adapt modern algorithms for processing RAW camera images to digitally restore the color of the scene to how it would have appeared at the time of capture and based on that understand the color vision of Dufaycolor film.

This is joint work with Linda Kimrova (Charles University) and Doug Peterson (DT Heritage) with significant support from the National Geographic Society.
 
Jan Hubička  is following on from his presentation to the group on Tuesday, December 19, 2023 when he spoke on Digitizing Paget, Finlay and Dufaycolor photographs at National Geographic Society.  He is an associate professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics, software developer at SUSE LINUX s.r.o. and also a co-founder and a co-director of Šechtl and Voseček Museum of Photography in Tábor, Czech Republic. His interest in early color photography was sparked by Autochromes taken by his great grandfather, Josef Jindřich Šechtl. In 2006 he organized exhibition of early color photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky (first in Europe except for Moscow) for which he made his own tool composing scans of the separation negatives. In 2007 he organized exhibition of (reproductions of) Czech Autochromes which got him into contact with American collector of early color photography, Mark Jacobs. He helped to digitize important part of Mark Jacobs' collection and in 2012 organized exhibition “When the World Turned to Color Early Color Photography from the Mark Jacobs Collection”. Work on regular color screen processes started in 2011 for exhibition of photographs from the American Colony Collection where Mark Jacobs identified negatives for Finlay color process. He also co-organized two international workshops on early color photography, "Legacy of three-color photography" in 2008 and "Space, Color, Motion" in 2013.
Cornwell-Clyne, Adrian. Colour Cinematography. United Kingdom: Champman & Hall, 1951.
https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.15062/page/n303/mode/2up
 
Thorne Baker, Thomas. The Spicer-Dufay Colour Film Process. The Photographic Journal, March, 1932, 109-117
https://archive.rps.org/archive/volume-72
 
Bonamico, C., and T. Thorne Baker. "Dyes and Colours in Photography." Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists 49, no. 4 (1933): 103-105.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1478-4408.1933.tb01749.x
 
The Dufaycolor Manual: Of Interest to Advanced Amateurs, Professional Photographers and Printers. United States: Dufaycolor, Incorporated, 1938.
https://filmcolors.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Dufaycolor_Manual_1938_print.pdf
 
Harrison and Horner. "The Principles of Dufaycolor prinitng" The photographic journal, May 1939, 320-329
https://archive.rps.org/archive/volume-79
 

Renwick, F. F.. "The Dufaycolour Process" The photographic journal, January 1935, 28-37
https://archive.rps.org/archive/volume-75/734248

 
Developing a RAW photo "by hand"
https://www.odelama.com/photo/Developing-a-RAW-Photo-by-hand/
 

Madame Yevonde and the VIVEX process - A talk by Disruptive Print
The work presented here is the result of a collaboration between the National Portrait Gallery and Disruptive Print, then part of the Centre for Print Research at the University of the West of England. The National Portrait Gallery approached us when they were looking for someone who could help them to print colour images taken by Madame Yevonde [1] in the 30s of the last century. Madame Yevonde was the most famous user of the VIVEX process [2] , the photomechanical reproduction process for colour photographs before the second world war in the UK. The VIVEX process was a commercial method and therefore only ill documented. What we know is that the images were taken through red, green, and blue filters on black and white film and then printed by layering pigmented gelatine layers in cyan, magenta, and yellow in top of each other, but how exactly is lost. We will discuss the registration of the three negatives and possible printing methods.
 
Disruptive Print
Disruptive Print is a collective of 4 printmakers with diverse backgrounds. Susanne Klein and Abigail Trujillo Vazquez are physicists, Elizabete Kozlovska is a conservator and Harrie Fuller a printmaker. Our research interests are old, partly forgotten, printing methods and how to
transform them into new, 21 st century, technologies with the aim to make them relevant again. All four of us are practising artists and our work can be seen in national and international print exhibitions.
Recommended Readings:
[1] N. P. Gallery. "Yevonde: A beginner's guide." National Portrait Gallery.
https://www.npg.org.uk/blog/yevonde-a-beginners-guide (accessed 25 of September,
2023).
[2] F. W. Coppin and D. A. Spencer, "Basic Features of the "VIVEX" process," The
Photographic Journal, vol. 88b, Section B: Scientific and Technical Photography, p. 5,
1948.

Digitizing Paget, Finlay and Dufaycolor photographs at National Geographic Society
Jan Hubička 
 
Early color collection of National Geographic Society consists of over 15,000 plates. In 2020, the Society began the Early Color Photography Conservation and Digitization Project. Probably for the first time a large archive of early color photographs has been digitized in resolution high enough to capture the individual color patches of the mosaic color processes.  While the archive consists mostly of Autochromes, in this talk I will focus on processes based on color screen filters with periodically repeating color patterns (Paget and Finlay color plates and Dufaycolor). These presented interesting problems for digitization, since the regular color pattern interferes with the Bayer filter in the camera. The high resolution scans also makes it possible to digitally reconstruct original color and geometry. It also motivated further research about manufacture process of these materials, color dyes used and other interesting aspects of these color processes. 
 
This is a joint work with Mark Jacobs, Linda Kimrová (Charles University), Kenzie Klaeser (Digital Transitions), Sara Manco (National Geographic Society), Doug Peterson (Digital Transitions).
 

Jan Hubička is an associate professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics, software developer at SUSE LINUX s.r.o. and also a co-founder and a co-director of Šechtl and Voseček Museum of Photography in Tábor, Czech Republic. His interest in early color photography was sparkled by Autochromes taken by his great grandfather, Josef Jindřich Šechtl. In 2006 he organized exhibition of early color photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky (first in Europe except for Moscow) for which he made his own tool composing scans of the separation negatives. In 2007 he organized exhibition of (reproductions of) Czech Autochromes which got him into contact with American collector of early color photography, Mark Jacobs. He helped to digitize important part of Mark Jacobs' collection and in 2012 organized exhibition “When the World Turned to Color Early Color Photography from the Mark Jacobs Collection”. Work on regular color screen processes started in 2011 for exhibition of photographs from the American Colony Collection where Mark Jacobs identified negatives for Finlay color process. He also co-orgnized two international workshops on early color photography, "Legacy of three-color phorography" in 2008 and "Space, Color, Motion" in 2013.
 
Reading
Geoffrey Barker, Jan Hubička, Mark Jacobs, Linda Kimrová, Kendra Meyer, Doug Peterson: Finlay, Thames, Dufay, and Paget color screen process collections: Using digital registration of viewing screens to reveal original color
https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.16076
 
Jan Hubička, Linda Kimrová, Kenzie Klaeser, Sara Manco, Doug Peterson: Digital analysis of early color photographs taken using regular color screen processes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.09631

The Interferential Colour Plate (aka Lippmann Plate), an introduction to the first true and permanent colour photographic technique in the history of photography
 
Materiality, Identification, and Conservation Challenges of Lippmann Plates
Jens Gold, PhD candidate, Preus Museum – National Museum of Photography, Norway
 
Keywords: Lippmann-Interferential-colour-plate, Interferential-colour, Lippmann, Neuhauss, Lehmann, Krone, Hertzberg
 
In 1891 the first true and permanent colour photographic technique in the history of photography was presented by Gabriel Lippmann (1845-1921). Almost immediately after the presentation, several photographers and scientists started to experiment and produce images with Lippmann colour. This utmost fascinating technique depends on the standing wave phenomenon of light, it therefore does not need pigments, nor dyes, to perform. Looking at the activity and the historic literature, several thousand Lippmann interferential colour images must have been produced. Today however, only a few institutions and collectors worldwide possess original examples of these rare colour images.
This photographic colour technique appears in a variety of conditions and presentation forms which highly affect their vulnerability, permanence, and viewing properties. The Preus Museum – the National Museum of Photography in Norway – has a considerable collection of twelve unique Lippmann colour plates made by two key pioneers of Lippmann colour: Richard Neuhauss and Hans Lehmann. In addition, a unique historic collection with books, papers and objects concerning the Lippmann process is part of this collection. The group of objects builds the basis of a four-year PhD research project that started in the summer of 2021, by the conservation department of Preus Museum [1]. The project aims to investigate Lippmann colour in terms of its materiality, history and its preservation and conservation challenges. The legendary interferential colour photographs by Richard Neuhauss, Hans Lehmann, Hermann Krone [2], Gabriel Lippmann and John Hertzberg are in focus of the presentation to be held. It will give an introduction to the history, technology, presentation, and preservation challenges of Lippmann colour plates. Examples of interferential colour plates will be shown during the presentation. This will be items from the Preus Museum collection, the Norwegian Museum of Technology, the Hermann Krone collection at the TU-Dresden, the Lette Verein Berlin as well as from the Photo Elysée Lausanne. 
 
[1] J. Gold, Materiality, Identification, and Conservation of Lippmann Plates - in Hanin Hannouch (Editor) Gabriel Lippmann’s Colour Photography: Science, Media, Museums; Amsterdam University Press, Florence 2022, Chapter 9, pp. 213-250.
[2] J. Gold, Hermann Krone’s contributions to Lippmann colour photography – colour plates, materiality, and condition; Rundbrief Photography; coming 2024.
 
CV:
Jens Gold has been a photograph conservator at Preus Museum: National Museum for Photography (Norway) since 2002. Currently, he is PhD Candidate at the University of Oslo – Institute for Archaeology, Conservation and History, with the research project: “Lippmann Interference Photography: History, Materiality and Treatment Challenges”. He was co-curator of Slow Color Photography – Lippmann interferential color photography in the Preus Museum Collection. In 1998 he completed his studies in photograph conservation from HTW Berlin - University of Applied Sciences, and in 2018 he graduated from the University of Oslo with an MA in object conservation. From 1999 to 2001, he was a fellow in the Mellon Advanced Residency Program in Photograph Conservation at the George Eastman House and the Image Permanence Institute in Rochester, New York.
Literature:  Hanin Hannouch (Editor): Gabriel Lippmann’s Colour Photography: Science, Media, Museums; Amsterdam University Press 2022.

Filters, Optics, Visions: Color Imaging and Missionary Photography in Modern China
 
Abstract: 
 
Cameras and visual technologies accompanied missionaries as they undertook diverse cultural, political, and religious projects in China across the first half of the twentieth century. In the process, missionaries and Chinese associates thought about and deployed evolving forms of color image-making and photography, tapping into global visual cultures with nineteenth century (and earlier) historical trajectories. Vivid evangelistic posters in quasi-photographic styles, hand-tinted lantern slides and photographic prints, and later color film embodied ideas about the roles of color in relation to cross-cultural visual modernities, local and international. Furthermore, these visual practices and products ultimately escaped their missionary mold and entered global perceptions, shaping transpacific views of modern China alongside Chinese engagements with the world. Drawing from his new book, Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China, Professor Joseph W. Ho will discuss intersections between color imaging, technological and religious imaginations, and transnational visions that transformed twentieth century Sino-Western encounters on both sides of the lens.
 
Short Bio:
 
Joseph W. Ho is Associate Professor of History at Albion College, Michigan, and a Center Associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. He is a historian of modern East Asia, US-China encounters, and transnational visual culture and media. Ho is the co-editor of War and Occupation in China: The Letters of an American Missionary from Hangzhou, 1937–1938 (Lehigh University Press, 2017), and the author of Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China (Cornell University Press, 2022). In 2024–2025, he will be the EDS-Stewart Distinguished Research Fellow at Boston College's Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, and is currently preparing his next monograph, Bamboo Wireless: Mediating the Cold War in Asia.