Louis Lumière is perhaps best known in the U.S. for his seminal role in the invention of cinema, but his most important contribution to the history of photography was the autochrome. Engagingly written and marvelously illustrated with over 300 images, The Lumière Autochrome: History, Technology, and Preservation tells the fascinating story of the first industrially produced form of color photography. Initial chapters present the Lumière family enterprise, set out the challenges posed by early color photography, and recount the invention, rise, and eventual decline of the autochrome, which for the first four decades of the twentieth century was the most widely used form of commercial color photography. The book then treats the technology of the autochrome, including the technical challenges of plate fabrication, described in step-by-step detail, and a thorough account of autochrome manufacture. A long final chapter provides in-depth recommendations concerning the preservation of these vulnerable objects, including proper storage and display guidelines. There are also engaging portfolios throughout the book showcasing autochrome photographs from around the world as part of an initiative founded by the French banker Albert Kahn, as well as engrossing testimonials by children of men who worked in the Lumière factories in the early twentieth century. The appendix includes transcriptions and facsimile reproductions from the Lumière notebooks as well as original patent documents.

On the history of the autochrome process

From its earliest days, photography could not escape the pictorial traditions that had gone before it. This book, the first comprehensive study of Pictorialism in Europe, analyses the remarkable diversity of approaches taken by photographers across the continent whose practice was infused with contemporary debate about photography's relationship to art. Written by an international team of art and photography historians, Impressionist Camera examines the ways in which practitioners realized their pictorial vision, from the re-creation of Academic painting in photography to the use of soft focus to lend images an impressionistic quality. Also explored are the cross-currents with photography in America - where Pictorialism went on to flourish - including the seminal work of Alfred Stieglitz.

Relief printing : woodcut, metal type, and wood engraving -- Intaglio and planographic printing : engraving, etching, mezzotint, and lithography -- Color printing : hand coloring and multiple-impression color -- Bits and pieces : modern art prints, oddities, and photographic precursors -- Early photography in silver : daguerreotypes, early silver paper processes and tintypes -- Non-silver processes : carbon, blueprint, platinum, and a couple of others -- Modern photography : developing-out gelatin silver printing -- Color notes : primary colors and neutrality -- Color photography : separation-based processes and chromogenic prints -- Photography in ink : relief and intaglio printing : the letterpress halftone and gravure printing -- Photography in ink : planographic printing : collotype and photo offset lithography -- Digital processes : binary issues, inkjet, dye sublimation, and digital C-prints -- Where do we go from here? : some questions about the future

This study analyzes the impact of color-making technologies on the visual culture of nineteenth-century France, from the early commercialization of synthetic dyes to the Lumière brothers’ perfection of the autochrome color photography process. Focusing on Impressionist art, Laura Anne Kalba examines the importance of dyes produced in the second half of the nineteenth century to the vision of artists such as Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet. The proliferation of vibrant new colors in France during this time challenged popular understandings of realism, abstraction, and fantasy in the realms of fine art and popular culture. More than simply adding a touch of spectacle to everyday life, Kalba shows, these bright, varied colors came to define the development of a consumer culture increasingly based on the sensual appeal of color. Impressionism—emerging at a time when inexpensively produced color functioned as one of the principal means by and through which people understood modes of visual perception and signification—mirrored and mediated this change, shaping the ways in which people made sense of both modern life and modern art. Demonstrating the central importance of color history and technologies to the study of visuality, Color in the Age of Impressionism adds a dynamic new layer to our understanding of visual and material culture.

"Copublished with the Milwaukee Art Museum on the occasion of the exhibition, Color rush: 75 years of color photography in America, on view February 22 to May 19, 2013."--Colophon.