From: Jean-Paul Gandolfo (jpgalt@infonie.fr)
Date: 09/23/03-04:41:34 PM Z
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>De : Jonathan Bailey <jon@jonathan-bailey.com>
>À : alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>Objet : RE: Autochromes
>Date : Mar 23 sep 2003 13:58
>
> Jean-Paul Gandolfo in Paris has been working for some time on replicating
> Lumiere's process. He teaches, appropriately enough, at Ecole Lumiere. The
> last time I was in Paris I purchased a group of stereoview autochromes -
> pretty unusual....
Dear list
In next december, the autochrome process will be 100 years old (first patent
asked december 17 th 1903). An exhibition will be held in the Albert Kahn
museum, a french collection, based west Paris, with something like 72 000
autochrome plates
showing circa 40 countries all over the world (I spent seventeen years
managing the photographic lab of the museum).
With my friend Bertrand Lavédrine we have made extensive researches in the
last ten years to understand the making of the process by Lumiere brothers,
based on contacts with Lumiére family, archive studies and modern plate
making (our scope wasn't really to produce alternative images but rather to
get a valuable knowledge of this technology, see comments below concerning
the difficulties connected with modern making).
Some years ago we met the son of the first potatoe starch maker, still
living in the mill where his father was extracting the small starch grains
for Lumiere brothers and we had with him a touching interview.
We have also restored the last existing crushing machine used by Lumiere
brothers (and never described at the time of the invention) to flatten the
potato starches coated on the plates. This precious machine is now running
again (very noisy) and will be showed in the exhibition.
In the papers of Louis Lumiere we have find the original workshop notebook,
written by Louis Lumiere himself, and containing the full description of the
process making (varnihes, dyes, emulsion, coating parameters ...).
We have made some modern (and alternative) tricolor screens used to produce
color plates with
an assembly method (black & white ilford FP4 + reversal developed, exposed
behind the screen, removed, developed and registered again with our screen).
The result was't as good compared with the original plate.
We think the bigger problems to solve in modern making of autochrome plates
are connected with the fact that it's an industrial process. The
autochrome plates were produced between 1907 and 1932 (circa), at this time,
the "do it yourself your process" is an old feeling belonging to the former
century.
Perhaps M Sullivan could start a line devoted to autochrome coating
(serious joke) ?????
We have published a paper in english some years ago dealing with our
researches.
Gandolfo JP, Lavedrine B, The autochrome process. from concept to prototype,
History of Photography, 1994 summer, volume 18, number 2, p 120-128. In
spite of the year he was publised, it's still up to date ....
We hope to publish last year all the informations we have accumulated in
past years to
share it with historical & alternative community.
The timing of centenary exhibition is november 2003 - february 2004.
List members are welcome
Best wishes to Jonathan and Tod (temperature in Paris is now low enough to
think again to carbon stories)
-- Jean-Paul GANDOLFO ENS Louis LUMIERE BP 22 93161 Noisy le Grand cedex Tel : 01 48 15 40 20 e-mail : jpgalt@infonie.fr
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