Les couleurs en photographie: causerie
In an unusual historical coincidence, the French inventors Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros each announced a solution to the longstanding problem of color photography on the very same day, May 7, 1869, at a meeting of the Société française de photographie. Unbeknownst to each other, they had both devised a subtractive, three-color process very similar to the basis of most modern color photography. Ducos and Cros both published treatises on their methods, which involved using color separation negatives to create a composite color print. Unfortunately, the process did not prove commercially successful in the nineteenth century, despite the fact that famed photographic publisher, Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, hoped to exploit Ducos’s process. Blanquart-Evrard presented the color method to the Société des Sciences in Lille in 1871, and published an example in its journal, but died the following year without ever establishing a color printing establishment.
Artwork Details
- Title: Les couleurs en photographie: causerie
- Author: Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard (French, 1802–1872)
- Date: 1871
- Medium: Lithographs
- Dimensions: 8 7/8 × 5 9/16 × 1/8 in. (22.5 × 14.2 × 0.3 cm)
- Classification: Books
- Credit Line: Joyce F. Menschel Photography Library Fund, 2018
- Object Number: 2018.233
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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