Art
Limited Edition Autochrome Print by Wilhelm Tobien
- Item Number
- 271
- Estimated Value
- Priceless
- Opening Bid
- 100 USD
Item Description
Dancing Girl, Tenerife Canary Islands, photograph by Wilhelm Tobien
Tobien made this photograph while on assignment for National Geographic magazine. He was an early master of autochromes, the world's first commercial form of color photography.
Generously donated by Rita Tuzon.
In 1907, the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, introduced the first viable method of color photography. Although color photographs had existed, the process was clumsy and complicated. The key ingredient, the Lumières discovered, was potato starch.
The process, called autochrome, involved covering a glass plate with a thin wash of tiny potato starch grains dyed red, green, and blue, thus creating a filter. A thin layer of emulsion was added over that. When the plate was flipped and exposed to light, the resulting image could be developed into a transparency.
Autochrome was immediately popular in Paris, where it was introduced, and soon spread to the United States. The first natural color photograph to appear in National Geographic magazine was an autochrome depicting a flower garden in Belgium, published in 1914. The archives of National Geographic have almost 15,000 glass autochrome plates, one of the largest collections in the world.
Like early black and white photography, autochrome was a slow process. Because exposures were long, subjects had to stay still—sometimes unsuccessfully—to avoid a blurred image. But with autochrome, the blur had an unusual aesthetic effect: Paired with the soft, dyed colors, it made the photo look like a painting.
"That's one thing that's unique about the autochromes that you don't see with modern photos—that beautiful painterly look," said Bill Bonner, image collection archivist at National Geographic.
Item Special Note
This item may be picked up at the LAFLA gala on October 19th or will be shipped at the winner's expense. We cannot ship outside of the U.S.
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