Steichens

[lsanderson]

A Splash of Photo History Comes to Light
By RANDY KENNEDY

At first glance the two pictures seem to be gorgeous anachronisms, full-color blasts from the black-and-white world of 1908, the year Ford introduced the Model T and Theodore Roosevelt was nearing the end of his second term.

But they are genuine products of their time, rare ones, among the few surviving masterpieces from the earliest days of color photography, made using a process developed by the Lumière brothers in France and imported to the United States by the photographer Edward Steichen a century ago this year. They were taken by Steichen, probably in Buffalo, and are thought to be portraits of Charlotte Spaulding, a friend and student who became his luminous subject for the portraits, which resemble pointillist miniatures on glass. More

Comments

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Breathtaking! Thank you for posting!

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Wow.

Sounds worth a trip to Rochester for.

Well, to see these and the rest of the museum!

Rediscovery

[magscanner.livejournal.com]

I had the good fortune to be peripherally involved in the rediscovery of part of the lost footage (1895-1940) of the Burton Holmes film archive. See http://www.burtonholmes.org/rediscovery/photos.html for some pictures from 2004, when it was in storage. It's now all at George Eastman House, and a small bit of it has already been restored and remastered.

But there was more; we have a good listing of the contents of the archive from ten years before the business operation disappeared. See http://www.burtonholmes.org/business/lastdays.html for some background. And...this month...the Game is Afoot! It is possible that more film exists and can be restored. If it is, you'll hear about it on the burtonholmes.org website.

And for those people living within driving distance of Rochester: Go! And write us a trip report.