Autochrome’s Enduring Allure – Lens

Looking through a loupe at the grain that makes up the gossamer colors of an autochrome is like looking at a pointillist painting, a miniature Georges Seurat.

Autochrome is a process developed in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in which glass plates were coated with a layer of potato starch mixed with color dyes that filtered light before it reached the emulsion. It yielded a grainy, positive image of muted pastels on a glass plate: a stained-glass window of the recent past.