“The fact is, none of us sufficiently appreciate the nobleness and sacredness of colour.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1863
1840s
Daguerreotypists begin coloring images using artist’s materials.
1856
Levi Hill publishes A Treatise on Heliochromy, which suggests that objects could be photographed in natural colors.
1904
Augusta and Louis Lumiere patent Autochrome, the first additive color screen film material.
1935
Eastman Kodak debutes the color film Kodachrome for home movies; the next year it’s introduced in a 35mm format.
1963
The Polaroid Corporation, led by Dr. Edwin Land, invents the first instant color picture.
Your family photograph collection will probably contain a variety of colored images. Some will be hand-colored. In some cases the image will have just the details enhanced, such as jewelry or collars, while in others, the entire original photograph has been overpainted. One popular form of nineteenth-century portraits appears at first glance to be a charcoal drawing; however, upon close inspection, you can see the charcoal is actually just outlining the photograph.
Clues in hand-colored images or color prints can help you both date your collection and learn something intimate about the ancestor pictured. While the coloring technique itself usually can’t date a hand-colored image (but can show you the color of someone’s eyes), a color photograph can be dated by the technique by which it was produced.
Although we take color for granted as a medium for family photographs, it was virtually unavailable until Kodak introduced amateur color photography in 1936. Instead, photographers had to use a variety of techniques to add color to images. Many studios employed colorists to highlight details or enhance images.
Jane Schwerdtfeger
All types of images could be hand-colored, including these arcade portraits, c.1910.
As early as 1841, photographers were seeking methods to add color to their images. As much as the popular press discussed the virtues of the daguerreotype, they criticized the absence of color. Photographers sought ways to increase the realism of their images. Since production of a color image was not yet possible, they improvised. Artistic mediums such as colored powders, oil paints, crayons, and charcoal were used to bring rosy cheeks and blue eyes to their subjects.
Hand-coloring accomplished several things. Early photographers wanted to impress their customers with high-quality images, and color was a way to satisfy them. Adding color created contrast and improved upon any imperfections in the image. Since early paper prints had a tendency to fade, colorists used charcoal to trace the image. Overpainting with a variety of substances was also used to reduce fading.
Colorists, usually artists, would add color to photographs to emphasize certain details. In some cases, so much color was added, it is difficult to determine whether the pictures are paintings or photographs. In reality, they are hybrids, combining elements of both media. You may have images in your collection that appear to be paintings but are actually hand-colored images.
There were many different methods used to color photographs. Manuals contained specific instructions on what features to color. Facial features could be improved by emphasizing the cheeks, nostrils, brow, chin, and bridge of the nose. Other commonly colored parts of a photograph were the hands, draperies, clothing, and background of the image.
The palette of colors depended on what was being colored. For example, jewelry and buttons were enhanced with gold, while pink was added to cheeks. Skilled technicians would add color to clothing. Everything from white collars to plaid garments could be improved with a little color. In one family’s collection, a black-and-white photograph contains the photographer’s hand-coloring instructions: “dark grey (sic) eyes, light golden hair, golden brown velvet suit, pearl buttons, cream collar and cuffs, and green peach leaves in hand.”
Different photographic methods required different types of coloring techniques. A daguerreotype’s metal surface could be enhanced with colored powders. They could be applied by using a brush or by gently blowing the colors onto the surface. Paper prints were easier to color than daguerreotypes since paper is a traditional painting surface. The tools used were the same as those for painting portraits: brushes and colors. In a few examples, photographic artists added individuals to the original photograph.
The need for the enhancements increased with the introduction of larger prints. A slight flaw that was barely visible in a carte de visite portrait was a major imperfection in the larger card photographs.
Photographers generally used retouching to eliminate bothersome flaws in negatives—it was more economical to fix the negative before prints were made. Tiny flaws in the negative could be filled in with pencil or charcoal. Retouching could eliminate minor blemishes, stray hairs, and distractions, while major changes to the negative could be made by actually scraping away some of the emulsion. In this way, significant changes to the original image could be introduced without damaging the photograph.
Collection of the Author
In addition to hand-coloring, photographers added details through retouching. The wavy hair in this portrait was enhanced with pencil.
There were several attempts to produce color images in the nineteenth century, but none were particularly successful or easy to duplicate. It wasn’t until 1904 that the first commercially successful color photography process was introduced. Developed by Auguste and Louis Lumiere, it was called the Autochrome. This process used starch grains dyed red, green, and blue to create a positive image. A photographer could insert the plate in the camera, expose it to light, and develop it. A special viewer called a “diascope” was needed to view the transparency. Photographs of scenes and individuals could be taken, but this process was used by professional photographers and rarely appears in family collections.
For another three decades, color photography remained a commercial venture in the hands of professional photographers and printers. It wasn’t until 1935 that the first color film for amateurs became available—Kodak’s Kodachrome 16mm motion picture film. The retail price of a roll of the film when it was first introduced was $7.75 for one hundred feet. In 1936, Kodachrome became available in an 8mm format and as slides.
Negative film became available from Kodak in 1941. Just as the early daguerreotypists advised individuals to wear certain colors to obtain a good likeness, so did Kodak. The company printed a manual to guide family photographers that contained a chart of acceptable clothing colors and background choices. The intensity of Kodacolor could be distracting if bright colors were worn against a colorful background.
Books on Early Color Photos
The Art of the Autochrome: the Birth of Color Photography by John Wood (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993).
A Half Century of Color by Louis Walton Sipley (New York: Macmillan Co., 1951).
Kodachrome and How to Use It by Ivan Dimitri (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940).
The Painted Photograph, 1839–1914: Origins, Techniques, Aspirations by Heinz K. and Bridget Henisch (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
In 1947, Edwin Land patented a process for producing black-and-white pictures that developed in a minute. This was the first time amateur photographers did not have to send their film to a lab for developing. The quality of the photograph could be judged immediately and reshot if necessary. Initially offered as a black-and-white process, Polaroid didn’t have color film available to the public until 1963. Close to 65 percent of the billion Polaroid pictures taken that year were in color. Most of them were family photographs. Polaroid maintained its appeal to amateur photographers by offering new and improved cameras every few years.
Each Polaroid picture contains a line code number on the back that refers to the date of manufacture and/or the type of film.
A list of Polaroid cameras appears on Wikipedia, <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Polaroid_instant_cameras> but it doesn’t contain specifics on image dimensions.
Handling Suggestions
There are a few preservation guidelines to follow with your color family photographs so they can last for future generations. Color photography is an unstable medium and needs to be properly stored in order to extend its lifetime. The life span of a typical color image is estimated at twenty-five years. A Polaroid will probably last for only five to ten years.
In 1975, an engineer at Eastman Kodak used a camera with image sensor chips that weighed eight pounds and took twenty-three seconds to capture the scene. While a digital camera was used at the 1984 Summer Olympics and during the first Gulf War, the first commercially successful digital cameras didn’t debut until 1990. The technology has come a long way since then. Now we have cameras small enough to carry in a pocket. You can learn more about the history of digital cameras at <www.digicamhistory.com>. If you own an older digital camera, you might be able to help with this online project to identify older cameras.
File names can be very helpful in identifying and dating digital images. Create a file name that helps to identify the people in the image. The challenge is to keep the file name short but useful. Also include the date of creation in the file name. Some digital cameras embed information, such as date and location in the digital file.
CASE STUDY: Wedding Album
Geri Diehl and Alan Spiven
Could this be the wedding picture of Elizabeth Goza and William Harrington, who married in 1846? The image passed from Geri Diehl’s grandmother to her mother and ultimately came to be in her collection. The picture is a crayon portrait, in which the photographer or an artist colored the couple’s eyes and parts of the background blue.
It is most likely a copy photograph of an earlier image. Since it is a copy, we can’t be absolutely certain of a time frame without being able to compare it to the original. In an artistically enhanced portrait, costume elements were sometimes altered to be more current than the original. The woman’s clothing lacks detail that could help assign a definite date—however, several costume features suggest a date from the late 1850s, which would rule it out as the Goza/Harrington wedding photo.
The man is wearing a double-breasted, shawl-collared vest of a style from the 1850s. His jacket has darker trim on the upper lapel and collar, which is not usual for either 1846 or the 1850s. One of the determining factors is his collar. In the 1840s, most men wore their collars standing up. His being in a different style would suggest the photo was not taken in the 1840s. Also, the man’s hair is blunt cut and he has a mustache and goatee, characteristics found in photographs from the 1850s.
It is unfortunate that the artist chose to represent the woman’s dress as solid black without sleeve and bodice details—the shape of the sleeves and bodice can be used to date an image. The artist spent time enhancing her collar and gold-tinting her broach and earrings. The style of her small drop earrings also confirms that the portrait was not taken in 1846, but in the 1850s. The woman is wearing her hair with a center part and a low bun behind her ears. In the 1840s women generally wore their hair looped over their ears. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, women wore their hair in the style shown in this portrait. Her wide collar of whitework became fashionable in the 1850s and is the primary evidence that the portrait was not taken in 1846. Dress collars were a different shape and style in the 1840s.
Family members suspect that this was a wedding portrait of the Goza/ Harrington couple, but the photographic evidence doesn’t agree with the marriage date. It could be a portrait the couple had taken later in their marriage or a different couple.