Over 100 Year Old Color Photos

People were experimenting with color photography as early as the 1840's. However these processes were extremely difficult, some involving complex chemical processes, or camera requiring hours or even days of exposure. These early photographs were very limited in colors and the color would fade almost as quick as it was developed.

Prior to the late 1890's color photography was only tried by very few experimenters who were willing to build their own equipment, do their own color-sensitizing of photographic emulsions, make and test their own colors, and devote a large amount of time and effort. Most photographers still regarded the idea of color photography as a dream.

Towards the end of the 1890's / early 1900's, things were getting much better. Gabriel Lippmann won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1908 for his work in this field. Though the color fidelity was extremely high from Lippmann's process, the images could not be reproduced and viewing required very specific lighting condition. This was still a professional process.

This changed with the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere with the invention of Autochrome Lumiere, the first commercial successful color photography method. Kodak would take this to a whole other level in 1935 with Kodachrome

Enough with the background, here are some amateur color photos taken over 100 years ago.

1913. Check out how different the bathing suits were.


Paris Street Vendor 1914


Moulin Rouge 1914


Sisters 1911


1909


Lady with her dog 1910


Eiffel Tower 1914


1917. A girl sitting next to a soldiers gear. Maybe her father about to leave for WWI?


1915. Grenata Street Army Info on that


Around this same time, a Russian by the name of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky set out to document the Russian empire in color photos. Here are some of his:













His self portrait

a reply to: FauxMulder

Excellent photos, I love seeing color renditions of that era. Reminds me of when they did the baseball home movies on HBO in color.

Wow, I don't really have many words for this other than wow.

Thanks for sharing.

-Alee

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: FauxMulder

Excellent photos, I love seeing color renditions of that era. Reminds me of when they did the baseball home movies on HBO in color.

Me too, it makes it a totally different experience than looking at black and white photos from the same era.

Thanks for posting this.
The Moulin Rouge photo is cool. That was taken the year before it burned down.

a reply to: FauxMulder

Couple things amaze me about 100 year old photos; how grim faced the women always look.

How clean all the structures appear, this was before car exhaust added their black stain to building facades.

originally posted by: FauxMulder

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: FauxMulder

Excellent photos, I love seeing color renditions of that era. Reminds me of when they did the baseball home movies on HBO in color.

Me too, it makes it a totally different experience than looking at black and white photos from the same era.

One of my favorite old movies, from 1901...

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: FauxMulder

Couple things amaze me about 100 year old photos; how grim faced the women always look.

Haha, probably because they are being forced to take the picture

How clean all the structures appear, this was before car exhaust added their black stain to building facades.

Agree, I think everything seems more clean. Nature in general looks great in those pics.

a reply to: FauxMulder

Very cool.

This is probably the closest thing we have to a time machine.

Nice UFO in the Eiffel picture to the right.

originally posted by: Spacespider
Nice UFO in the Eiffel picture to the right.

What about the black comet on the other side!?

a reply to: FauxMulder

It is amazing to me how time gets erased when these pictures are colorized rather then black and white. It could be anywhere in today's world...thanks for sharing these photos.

a reply to: FauxMulder

Faux these are amazing. Thankyou 🤗

A touch of color breathes life.

The post above mine prefers B&W... they're not wrong.

Let's all enjoy the click
of time...🤗

These photos make me loathe the banality of modern design.

a reply to: intrptr

Couple things amaze me about 100 year old photos; how grim faced the women always look.

In this time period, people did not smile or say cheese when a photo was taken.

Photos were very serious things, hence the grim looks. Was not until much later that people started to smile at cameras.

P

a reply to: pheonix358

OP, very cool pics.

Pheonix, the reason people didn't smile didn't have as much to do with being serious, as it was about exposure times being so long people could not maintain the smile. So photographers would tell them not to smile so they would hold their faces as still as possible in an easily maintainable fashion.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Thank you Flying target I had never come across that info ... or never put it together myself.

God I love learning new stuff!

Thanks!

Makes perfect sense now that I put it all together. And from one of my favorite people even if we do disagree occasionally.

P

a reply to: pheonix358

My pleasure, Thanks!

As an amateur photographer myself, I actually wondered the exact same thing a number of years back. I thought it very odd people never smiled, so I actively looked into it and the exposure time thing was the reason.

Heh, I can remember thinking to myself..."Man, people must have been really miserable back then!"

Turned out, that wasn't the reason at all.

On an anecdotal note, getting people to smile "naturally" for a photograph is actually surprisingly difficult. Having them continue to smile (naturally) through a sequence of several photographs is even more difficult still...and modern day cameras are lightning fast in comparison to the cameras used in the OP's pics.

a reply to: FauxMulder

They were forced to work hard, I don't know about play hard, mores and stereotypes were enforced , more.

You had to be proper...

Look at this pic, guess who the stern taskmaster is? Center figure, hands on hips, what a scowl on that face. The two nearest girls are actually leaning away from her 'heat'.

I can almost hear her yell after the (no smiles) time lapse exposure, "Now get back to work!"



Imo, big diff between their sad faces and the "No smiling" plea on the part of the Photographer.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Pheonix, the reason people didn't smile didn't have as much to do with being serious, as it was about exposure times being so long people could not maintain the smile. So photographers would tell them not to smile so they would hold their faces as still as possible in an easily maintainable fashion.

Its more complex than that...

We noticed that every photo until 1900 is devoid of emotion; however, soon after people began exhibiting wide, full smiles in both portraits and candid shots. So we just had to know why.

They go on to debunk harder life, bad teeth and exposure times...

We ourselves had always simply assumed that the lack of smiling was due to the long exposure times for cameras of the day. It would have been VERY painful to sit for an hour or more, but our research shows that exposure times were no more than 4-5 seconds even for the early photos. So that's not it either...

Read on to discover the 'seriousness' of the situation...

archives, why people didn't smile...