Dufay Dioptichrome Transparency of Basket of Apples c. 1911 

Woman in Oriental inspired gown, sitting in wooden throne from the collection at the George Eastman House 

like Klimt’s Judith, but live flesh (same era, even).

Woman reading in garden from the collections at the George Eastman House 

Woman in floral silk robe from the collection of the George Eastman House 

is it just me or does she look like jenny slate?

Villa Bonnier, Stockholm, Sweden by Swedish National Heritage Board 

Pink roses in vase

Medium: color plate, screen (Autochrome) process

via George Eastman House on Flickr.

Glass dish with classical figures, ceramic bowl and vase of flowers
H. Wormleighton, ca. 1915.

Medium: color plate, screen (Autochrome) process

via George Eastman House on Flickr.

‘Mother and Child,’ 1912.
Henry Essenhigh Corke (1883-1919).
Autochrome.

stick that in your klimt and smoke it. 

Maker: Unidentified

Title: Woman in satin dress holding mirror

Medium: color plate, screen (Autochrome) process

Date: ca. 1915

Early autochrome color photo of some canadian cowboys.

early color photograph of Claude Monet standing in a garden

Self-portrait seated at the window of my bungalow in Carmel 
by Arnold Genthe
(circa 1906-11). 

What I like is that this early, autochrome-process color photograph cannot be dated exactly despite the fact that it was produced by a man as meticulous as a Scientist. He was a chemist! All pre-1920s photographers trying to print in color relied on a sophisticated understanding of & facility with problems complex enough for a full-blown laboratory or, if you will, a studio.

Science is serious, right? Presumably, one learns to take notes with surgical precision, and that writing is distinctions served with a cold, blunt stare. 

Yet, here, the secret hiding between 1906 and 1911 is a five-year long hyphenation: “somewhere in there, that five year window of time - that’s when it was made; that’s all I remember about that photograph”) suggests that there’s no good way to find out more precisely.

One could not, for example, identify the rug. One could not identify the chair.  One could not identify the kind of shirt Mr. Genthe, seated here, is wearing. One could not make these determinations by simply examining the photograph. One could not do so by the style of the room, not by its colors, not by the texture of the wooden chair or the pattern across the floor or what an expert might determine to be Chinese characters across the top, over the window?

To say nothing of what it would take to look and see if there are any travel records indicating when and where Genthe might have gone, and which of those place might look like this.  

I like this problem because the implication is that this chemically astute photographer sitting by the window never took the time to write dates on any of his work (or else perhaps there was no easy way to do so). I like that maybe Genthe just didn’t keep a log or a well-tended chart of accounts. What I like is that this man sitting by the window perhaps tried to memorize every aspect related to his work. To crystallize it the way you could crystallize an image, with a few chemicals. An autochrome is basically just crystallized color and light. Well, more specifically it is microscopic dyed bits of potato mixed with an emulsion of silver halide on bare glass; that is, a recipe. 

More likely, the fact that the photograph’s date of execution is unattributable is because there is a hole in the historical record. A connection that hasn’t yet been. A place where the information goes dark (as around the edges of the photograph): there is something peculiar about an absence of information in this age where the Library of Congress has agreed to take on the task of archiving the entirety of Twitter.

(Incidentally, the photograph above is provided for free to the public domain including the information about the ambiguity of its date by the Library of Congress).

Still, seated there at that window gazing out on what is presumably nature (despite the fact that the barely blown highlights seen through the window skew towards an unnatural magenta) is a diligent and troubled Romantic born just slightly too late and making some of the earliest color photographs. And surely Genthe looks like the kind of young man who would’ve written the date down somewhere.

Can anyone read what is written across the top?

• Title: [woman wearing a headscarf]
• Date Created/Published: [between 1907 and 1940]
• Medium: 1 transparency : autochrome, color ; 5 x 7 in.

an early autochrome portrait of Rodin with a statue

Rodin—The Eve, 1907
Edward Steichen (American, born Luxembourg, 1879–1973)
Autochrome