From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 09/26/03-10:17:10 PM Z
Jean-Paul's story of replicating Autochrome is awesome... makes gum
printing sound like kindergarten (as of course it practically is). But for
anyone interested in the process, let me suggest two books by John Wood.
The first is "The Photographic Arts," which has a section on autochromes &
a very provocative essay -- stating his iconoclastic view that the
Steiglitz crowd were mere amateurs of the process, tho they talked a good
game -- while others, forgotten today, were the real maestros. The other
book is titled Autochrome... I don't have that one, have only flipped
through it, but the reproductions therein are stunning. (I wasn't as
impressed by the choices in The Photographic Arts; they looked to me too
much like National Geographic.)
Judy
On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Jean-Paul Gandolfo wrote:
> ----------
> >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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