The Autochrome was an early photographic process that served as a cornerstone for the color photography of today. Developed by the Lumière Brothers, a pair of French film-making pioneers, the Autochrome made a giant leap from the grayscale of the 19th century to a more vividly rendered modern world. Unlike previous color photographs, where pigments were hand-applied to existing black and white prints, the additive Autochrome process used grains of starch to filter the colors of light on film. Improving upon a system introduced by Joly in Ireland it became the first chromatic process to achieve commercial success. Although hampered by long exposure times and muted uneven tones, the Autochrome brought the photographic image to new and astonishing levels of realism, early examples of which are coveted by contemporary collectors for their rare, painterly quality.
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