Czech Autochromes

[Struan Gray]

I know there are others here who share my irrational fascination with Autochromes and early colour. The Czech thread caused me to have a browse of my old bookmarks and I found that the photographic museum in Tabor has a great online exhibit of Czech autochromes:

http://sechtl-vosecek.ucw.cz/en/expozice10/index.html

The Karel Smirous page in particular has some wonderful examples, including Filmcolor micrographs:

http://sechtl-vosecek.ucw.cz/en/expozice10/autochromy-smirous.html

Interesting to see something other than just the usual Autochrome fare of portraits and flower gardens. Interesting too to see how little the popular themes of LF photography have changed.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

a great online exhibit of Czech autochromes:

Thanks Struan !

Superb(e) !!

I like very much the idea that, at the Czech centennial meeting on Autochromes mentioned on the web site, during what they call the vernisaz of the exhibition, a pianist played some (French ?) music of the times !
Something usually missing in our informal LF gatherings ;) except, may be, in Montreux, Switzerland in 2007 where we had, as a bonus, a jazz improvisation by a famous jazzman on a Bösendorfer Imperial... (Montreux is supposed to be stuffed with jazzmen all-year-round ;) )
Didn't Debussy write a piece entiteld : En Blanc & Noir ?
And what about Ravel's Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis (1916)
...
Le premier était plus bleu que ciel,
(Mon ami z'il est à la guerre)
Le second était couleur de neige,
Le troisième rouge vermeil...


We want both, and live LF photography, and live music ;-)

[GPS]

...
The Czech thread caused me to have a browse of my old bookmarks and I found that the photographic museum in Tabor has a great online exhibit of Czech autochromes:
...

You see what one can find when hard pressed on topics of Moravia borders and Carpathians? The real Czech treasures...:)

[David A. Goldfarb]

Excellent!

[Struan Gray]

Emmanuel: 'impressionist' probably does means French, but Janacek's "In the mists" is also often given that label, and would be appropriate for an exhibition of pictorialist work :-)

For me, any half-way decent piano music tends to take over the whole room. Janacek and Dvorak both wrote music for the harmonium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonium) , which would be a lot less jarring as background music to an opening.

I have a soft spot for the museum in Tabor because I visited that building when it was only a cake shop. It speaks to the civilisation of the Czech nation that the cakes remain now that the photography museum is in place. The idea of combining Autochromes with afternoon tea (or whatever the Czech is for kaffee und küchen) seems just right.


GPS: one application of silver that the digital age has yet to make obsolete is in the lining of clouds.

[Bill_1856]

Wonderful -- Thanks, Struan. I love Autochromes, my favorite is (of course) Lartigue.

[darr]

Thanks Struan!

[Henry Ambrose]

Thanks Struan,
Those are really nice.

Henry

[Jiri Vasina]

The idea of combining Autochromes with afternoon tea (or whatever the Czech is for kaffee und küchen) seems just right.




"čaj a zákusek"

;)

[Struan Gray]

"čaj a zákusek"

Thanks Jiri. I think. :-)

[PaulRicciardi]

Thanks for the post, some really good work in those galleries.
The early colour work is very beautiful.

[Bill_1856]

I wonder what the "ISO" would have been for Autochrome plates?

[Ernest Purdum]

Wilhelm, I haven't found it yet, but I found "sixty times as slow as the normal negative emulsion of that period". I'll keep looking. That low sensitivity emphasizes the achievements of the Autochrome users. Underwater? Amazing.

[Nathan Potter]

Never really knew how these autochromes were made but I see the process was pretty clever. The notion of filling the voids between the dyed starch grains with lampblack serves to enhance the suttle color aspect of an autochrome by somehow decreasing the contrast of the image peripherally around each grain. Perhaps this is sort of analogous to a first generation contrast film masking process in color printing.

The photomicrographs of Karel Smirous in autochrome are particularly fascinating. They look like geologic thin sections executed under polarized light microscopy.

Many thanks Struan

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[aduncanson]

I thought that the lamp black was necessary to preserve the intensity of the color, which otherwise would be overwhelmed by white light coming through the spaces between the starch grains.

This technology is very cool. I wish somebody made materials for a similar process today, replacing the randomly arranged dyed starch grains with tiny plastic filter elements on a clear substrate backed with a B&W reversal emulsion.