A very brief history of colour photography

In 1816 Joseph Nicephore Niepce had yet to invented photography, although he had already shared with his brother Claude his concern to “find a way to fix colours” (Niepce, 1973). Other curious and practitioners of the new technique shared the same feeling, and their endeavours led to a first accessible solution: hand-applied colour. From the dawn of photography come splendid examples of skillfully painted daguerreotypes and the wonderful albumen prints of the Beato brothers painted by Japanese artists in Yokohama studio in 1860. The search for a photochemical process capable of fixing light, shadows and colours at the same time has engaged scholars and scientists in a continuous chase of techniques. Similar to other human events, such a race would see losers and winners. From Levi Hill’s first “false” discovery to John Joly’s intuition, upon which the digital photography is still based today. From Thomas Sutton’s photography, which put into practice physicist J. C. Maxwell’s theories, to the first digital camera by Steven Sasson and Kodak. We should not forget the marvellous photographs taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, the first to bring colour photography out of laboratories and studios into the real world. Colour photography as an expressive medium developed along with the evolution of the photochemical process. Before becoming a consolidated reality it had to wait for the stability of the results achieved by the Lumiere brothers’ Autochrome films. Most important photographers in the history of photography have challenged themselves with colour photography, thus showing its expressive potential. However, colour photography has never freed itself from the halo effect of a means intended for commercial or vernacular purposes. Only when William Eggleston opened the first exhibition of colour photographs at the MoMA in New York in 1976, a real change of pace and consideration took place.