Saturday, November 08, 2008

The Great War in Colour



Like most people my overriding image of the first war is black and white, a war fought in shades of grey. These pictures are shot on a early colour film called 'Autochrome' when I first saw the pictures of the French soldiers above I was amazed that they fought in beautiful light blue uniforms I'd previously imagined that they would be grey.


Building bridges in no mans land.


I love this image, just beautiful. I call it a centime for your thoughts.

Autochrome was the first commercial colour process, patented in 1906 by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière. The process was an ingenious one, using potato starch grains dyed different colours coated very thinly on a panchromatic mono emulsion here is the Wikipedia description of the material and its process.

Beautiful images of a very turbulent time in European history, this post is made on remembrance day 90 years after the end of the war in which these photo's were taken.
Spare a thought for the sacrifice made, by men and women from all sides.

3 comments:

Noons said...

Very interesting stuff, Mark.

Thnaks a lot for this!

Photo–Smith said...

Glad you liked it, I think there are more in the French National archive. If you want to see early colour Google 'Albert Kahn Banker' I think there is a Wiki page.
Mark

osbornb said...

Beautiful color photographs, a revelation!