The documentary use of the autochrome in France

Abstract

On Monday 10 June 1907, six hundred people were gathered in a room of the French newspaper L'Illustration.¹ Auguste Lurniere was about to inttoduce them to a new revolutionary process: the autochrome plate (figure 1). This lecture was a major event because, from this point, photography was endowed with colour. The fact that the christening of the autochrome process took place at the headquarters of L'Illustration was indicative of the imminent importance that colour was to hold in the illustrated press and in documentary usage. However much monochrome photography was recognized as a convenient means of record-making, it lacked an essential ingredient to achieve complete realism: colour. The autochrome plate opened the doors to new possibilities in the recording of reality. As soon as the process was marketed by the Lumière Society its documentary qualities were unanimously welcomed.