Based
on text from the original book: Shades of Light:
Photography and Australia 1839-1988
Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery
15: Appendix: Natural Colour
photography in Australia 1895 – 1960
By Chris Long
footnotes next chapter (16) contents
In
the pursuit of expanding illusions of reality, two photographic
techniques emerged at the turn of the century.
Cinematography provided a new narrative tool extending illusion
into the dimension of time and movement, while colour photography
redressed a major disadvantage of camerawork in the nineteenth
century.
Throughout
the nineteenth century, black and white emulsions were only
sensitive to blue and violet light. This was a problem
in landscape photography resulting in toneless black masses
of foliage and cloudless skies. This deficiency could be overcome
by printing in clouds from separate negatives.
By
1900 all of the ingredients for colour photography were available.
Sensitising
dyes were developed to extend the colour
response
of emulsions to the red end of the spectrum, so that the
ideal of equal colour response, or 'panchromatism', had been
achieved
in the laboratory by 1884(1). For the next twenty years,
however, the inclusion of these sensitising dyes in the emulsion
led
to undesirable side effects, as they deteriorated quickly
and tended
to fog.
The
keeping properties of plates were particularly important for
Australian photographers. At the turn of the
century,
shipment time from Britain would delay the sale of all
photographic materials at least five weeks from the time of
manufacture.
The plates
would have to pass through the hot and humid equatorial
zone, and could spoil in transit.
News
of experiments in colour photography overseas was received
in Australia as early as
15 February 1894, when
the Photographic
Review of Reviews reported on the Lumière brothers
in France and their experiments and improvements to the
Lippman
process(2). The earliest confirmed(3) local experiments with
colour in Australia were demonstrations of the lantern
kromskop in 1899,
by Mark Blow, proprietor of the Crown Studios in Sydney,
then one of the largest and best equipped in Australia(4). The lantern
kromskop was devised by an American experimenter, and
involved the superimposition of three colour separation
transparencies
onto a screen, through their respective primary colour
filters(5).
Blow's
flower studies were praised as novel and beautiful in the A.P.-R.
on 24 August 1899. The A.P.J.
also reported
on
Blow's demonstrations and ‘the difficulty under
which he laboured, the book of instructions not having
come with the instruments
he imported, so that he had to experiment'(6).
Blow's
position as a well-equipped professional allowed
him to use expensive equipment requiring complex manipulation.
A.J.
Perier (1870-1964) recalled that Blow made his own
papers and plates(7). He might also have been able
to
make up
special panchromatic
emulsions of his own, thus overcoming the usual spoiling
of the plates en route to Australia.
Although
the kromskop views were rarely taken in Australia, many imported
examples were circulated,
and these stimulated
a local
appreciation of colour work. H.H. Baker of Melbourne,
for instance, toured Australia with a kromskop
giving
demonstrations
to the
Northern Tasmanian Camera Club in January 1899(8).
The
first Australian natural colour prints on paper were made
by a Swiss photographer and photoengraver,
James
Aebi (w. c.
1897-1910s) of the Workingman's College (later
RMIT) Photographic Club in Melbourne during February
1905(9). Within a few months,
Aebi was running classes in three-colour printing
at the college, probably for the benefit of members
of
the book
and magazine
printing industry.
Aebi's
colour printing system was most likely very similar to the
Sanger-Shepherd process,
which was
described by
W. De. W.
Abney in the A.P-R. of 21 January 1904. Colour
separation negatives were printed onto ‘matrix'
relief-image films soaked in appropriate dyes,
and these dye images were transferred onto
a sheet of white paper coated with clear gelatin.
We know the system today in a modified form
as the dye transfer process.
A
few weeks later, on 10 March 1905, the Launceston
Examiner reported on colour prints produced
by a similar process
by the Launceston chemist, Frank Styant Browne.
As the tri-separation
exposures were of several minutes' duration,
only still-life subjects were attempted,
as was the
case with the earlier
work of Aebi and Blow. A particular problem
with the system was
the
variability of natural sunlight with time.
A passing cloud could cause the exposure
to vary
between
the colour separations,
resulting
in a spurious colour cast in the final image.
In
May 1907 A.V. Wilkinson, a photographer for the Town and
Country journal, lectured
on the
tri-separation process
to
the Mosman
Photographic Society in Sydney. He demonstrated
examples
of Pinatype, autotype, and tricolour carbon
prints, together with
transparencies
made by the Pinatype, Sanger-Shepherd and
Joly processes(10). His
colour transparency of Mosman
scenery is the
oldest surviving Australian example of
colour photography.
While
colour photography continued to be shackled to the preparation
and printing
of three separate
panchromatic
negatives, few
Australian workers bothered to pursue
it. Exposure, registration and development
were all quite critical of manipulation.
A much simpler system was needed to encourage
more general
application
of natural
colour photography - a system using a
single plate with a single exposure.
Such a process was introduced commercially
in the latter half of 1907, resulting
in the
first
wave
of enthusiasm
for colour
photography. The last few summers of
Edwardian Australia were recorded in all the hues
of nature by the colour
pioneers.
Additive screen plate colour: 1907-1930s
By
placing a screen comprised of fine lines or dots of the three
primary colours
in front of the panchromatic plate, it is possible
to produce a colour photograph. Colour television functions
in a similar way. Viewed from a distance, the screen of dots
has a uniform grey appearance. But by selectively blocking
some of the primary colour dots or lines, any colour can
be synthesised.
In
comparison with modern colour processes, the screen process
had a number of disadvantages. The screen plate
limited the
detail resolved by the photograph, and sometimes caused
moiré effects.
The constant presence of the colour screen and photographic
emulsion in the light path made additive transparencies
inherently dense
with poor light transmission. So these processes were principally
suited to the production of transparencies, where a great
deal of light could be forced through the image. Very few systems
were advanced to allow additive screen colour printing on
paper(11) and no Australian additive colour prints are known to have
survived. As a result, the overwhelming majority of all
pre1940 Australian
colour photographs are transparencies, usually intended for
projection.
It
was possible to prepare tri-separation ink printing plates
for the reproduction of screen colour transparencies
for publication
in books and magazines. But this was a circuitous and expensive
method, only suited to the few early magazines like Camera
Work, The Studio or the National Geographic .Magazine,
where either
the affluence of readership or the large circulation would
bear the high cost. Australia had few magazines of this
type, and
our very small population rarely justified the trouble.
Colour
photography's great commercial breakthrough originated in
France in mid 1907. The Lumière brothers, pioneers
of cinematography in the 1890s, turned their attention
to colour photography in the first decade of this century.
By 1904 they
perfected a screen plate using dyed grains of potato
starch with a panchromatic emulsion coated over them. By exposing
the plate
through the screen of starch grains, then developing
straight
to a positive transparency by chemical reversal, the
system provided beautiful colour transparencies known as autochromes(12). Production
problems prevented their commercial introduction until
1907, with supplies initially being limited to the French
domestic
market owing to a heavy demand(13).
The
autochrome system caused a rapid expansion of Australian colour
photography.
Its muted tones and grainy pointillism
was reminiscent of Impressionist painting, and the
Pictorial school
of photography was primed to nurture such a system.
By September 1907, autochrome plates were available in England,
but they
didn't reach Australia until the end of that year(14). Most of the early
autochrome exponents in Australia were members of photographic
societies who had traced the reputation of the new
plates
from the enthusiastic European reports reprinted in
the local magazines.
In December 1907 the Tasmanian amateur photographers,
J.H. Lithgow (w. 1892-1910) and F.E. Burbury(1866-c.
1930),
of the Northern
Tasmanian Camera Club acquired the first autochrome
plates to arrive in Australia(15).
Frank
Styant Browne and Vaudry Robinson (c.1885-c.1961) were also
involved in these colour
experiments(16). The
plates were
imported directly from France by Burbury, and the
technical knowledge of Browne and Lithgow, both professional
chemists, aided them
in undertaking the reversal development process.
Development
by reversal involved several more baths than the
standard negative positive system, and the chemicals for the
bleaching stage
of this process were rather corrosive and difficult
to handle.
Amateur
botanists including H.J. King (c. 1892-1973), L.N.G. Ward and
A.A. Pearson were attracted to the
new autochromes,
which
were well suited to still life studies of flowers
and plants. Relatively few early colour photographs
exist
of Australian
streetscapes or of important historical events.
Much of the surviving early
colour material executed in Australia reveals a
lack of imagination in subject matter and application
in comparison with work
in overseas magazines like Camera Work and The
Studio. The 1908
special edition of The Studio magazine was devoted
entirely to the possibilities of colour photography.
One
of the few photographers to attempt other than conventional
still-life studies was the artist
Lionel Lindsay who
made a series of autochromes of nudes in 1908(17). Most of the
early Australian
autochrome exponents were enthusiastic amateurs,
as few commercial professional markets existed
for irreproducible,
expensive
colour transparencies(18).
Some
commercial studios - Talma, Falk, Freeman and L.W. Appleby(19) -seem
to have made trials with autochromes, although
no examples of this usage are known to exist today. After
these initial
trials
little practical follow-up in colour activity
seems to have occurred. Much of this professional activity
was reported in
the local
photographic magazines, so that the intention
might have been more concerned with being seen to use the
new process. Commercial
colour portraiture was hampered by the long
exposures and never really took off.
By
March 1908 the autochrome fever had reached
Adelaide, where A.A. Stump took some test
subjects(20). On 23
April 1908 the Adelaide Register reported on experiments
with stereo autochromes taken
by a prominent amateur photographer, noting
that 'Mr Debbie spoiled nine plates before achieving
success'. It seems
that the process
could be an expensive pursuit.
April
1908 saw the autochrome spread among Melbourne's professional
photographers,
including
Andrew
Barrie (1860-c.1939) and
T. Paterson, who used the plates for landscape
and portraiture(21). But the majority of
laurels in early
Australian colour
photography fell to amateur practitioners.
F.A. Joyner, a Pictorialist
and prominent member of the South Australian
Photographic Society,
took a number of autochromes around 1908
including ambitious genre scenes and sensitive
portraits.
He had written
an account of the introduction of the process
in the Adelaide
Register as
early as 28 December 1907. By August 1909
Frank Styant Browne won a medal at the
Franco-British Exhibition
in London for
his autochromes(22) and many other amateurs
were
taking similar awards.
Arthur
D. Whitling of Summer Hill, New South Wales, was another early
amateur
autochrome
exponent, notable for
the survival
of a major part of his autochrome stereo
collection in the Australian
War Memorial(23). Whitling's varied coverage
of street
scenes, landscapes and interiors cover
the years from about 1909-1920.
These were taken in a small stereo camera
called a Verascope, which was popular
among several
autochrome enthusiasts.
Each image is only about 3.8 centimetres
square, but
they provide
excellent definition and superb colour
rendition, as they were viewed directly
by magnification
and were
not baked
in lantern
slide projectors as so many autochromes
seem to have been. Whitling's stereo
autochromes attracted the
attention of
the A.P-R. on 22
August 1913. The article mentions that
exposures
of about one and a half seconds at f8
in strong sunlight were
necessary for the colour plates. Such
slow exposures naturally placed
tremendous
limitations on subject matter. Action
subjects were almost impossible to deal with, so
that the
colour
photography
of this pioneer
period often seems almost as static and
formal as the
wet plate
photography of a half century earlier.
The small format and relatively fast
(f4.5) lenses
of the
Verascope helped to
overcome this somewhat.
The
value of the colour photograph as a documentary record
was, however, recognised
very early
by travellers and
expedition photographers.
The photographic records of large expeditions
tend to be preserved in central repositories,
and in
this case
the
early colour
work is readily identified and mostly
able
to be located.
The
H.P.J. of 23 October 1911 contains a lengthy article on the
preparations
for the Mawson
Antarctic Expedition
of 1911-1913.
Here we read that Sir Douglas Mawson
was an expert on colour photography,
having
been tutored
in
the work by
one of
its leading
exponents in London, 'It will therefore
be very interesting to see what wonders
will
be revealed
to us through
the modern autochrome
process'(24). Several
autochrome plates from this expedition
do survive
in the Mawson Institute in Adelaide,
as do a further
set at the Australian Archives, Canberra,
mainly illustrating sunset effects
and the plumage of birds, but these
were probably
the work of the expedition photographer,
Frank Hurley. The report refers to
the donation by Messrs Lumière
of Paris of a 'case of autochrome
plates' to the expedition, and a
donation
by Newman and Guardia of ten cameras,
'mostly of the reflex type,
including two Sybils, fitted with
carriers for autochrome work'.(26).
Regular
screen processes
With
their random pattern of colour screen dots, the autochromes could
not be easily copied. The solution to this
was initially provided
by several processes(25) which involved exposing the negative plate
through a separate colour screen plate with a regular pattern
of ruled or printed dots or lines. Many of these regular screen
processes
had rather coarse ruling in comparison with the fine irregular
screen of the autochrome, and their colour fidelity was not as
good. Several
early processes were launched but they quickly failed. The best
known and longest surviving regular screen process was the Paget
system
of G.S. Whitfield and Clare Finlay, introduced commercially in
April 1913(26).
Many
amateurs took up Paget colour for its ease of use and ready reproducibility.
L.N.G. Ward and H.J. King used
the system around
World War One. But the most outstanding Australian exponent
of the Paget process was Frank Hurley to whom the Paget system
offered
many
advantages over the autochrome. The colour screen plate was
usually sold as a separate item to the panchromatic negatives.
On a strenuous
expedition, a single screen plate could be placed into the
camera to expose many negatives in succession. The resultant
negatives
looked like standard black and white negatives with a noticeable
crosshatch
in areas of strong colour.
Transparency
positives could be made from these panchromatic negatives by
contact printing. These
positives were bound in
register with
a colour viewing screen of the same type used for exposure,
to reproduce the view in full colour. Many copies could be
printed
from each negative,
the resultant positives being each registered with their
own colour viewing screens. If, on the other hand, a black and
white print was
required, the negative could be simply printed onto paper
without
bothering about the colour viewing screen.
Hurley's
first work with the Paget process was undertaken on the Shackleton
Antarctic Expedition 1914-1916, during
which
he was forced
to destroy most of the photographic plates after the demise
of the expedition ship, the Endurance. A few Paget colour
views of the ship
in its death throes have survived and are now held at the
Mitchell Library. Most of these are half-plate format transparencies,
intended for direct viewing. Hurley considered these Paget
views
to be 'amongst
the most valuable records of the expedition'(27).
After
his return to England in 1916, Hurley used Paget colour plates
to
record various aspects of the battlefront
in the
World War One.
From August 1917 he took colour photographs as part of
an overall record of life on the Western Front(28). Owing
to the
longer
exposures needed for the Paget colour system than for
monochrome photos,
most of these were limited to the recording of static
views. However,
Hurley commented that:
The
characteristic colour of the shell-torn battlefields and rain-filled
shell craters discoloured
by gas fumes
are all
portrayed with perfect
accuracy(29).
The
Paget colour record of the war continued and expanded when Hurley
moved to Palestine in December 1917(30). However
he was either unwilling
or unable to undertake really newsworthy reportage
with this system. The collection is now split between
the
Australian War Memorial in
Canberra and the Mitchell Library in Sydney(31).
Today
many of the Paget viewing screens, which are bound in register
with their transparency positives,
have faded
or suffered
colour
shifts. The purplish hues which some of these present
no longer give a true indication of their original
colour fidelity.
Hurley's
war photographs, including many of his Paget plates cropped down
to lantern slide size
for projection,
were
exhibited at the
Grafton Galleries in London in June 1918(32). This
was perhaps the first professional show by an
Australian photographer
in which colour
photographs took a major part. His work with
the Paget
process did not cease with the war, and he is
known to have used
it in New Guinea
in 1921 for recording life on Maui Island, and
possibly elsewhere in his tropical ventures(33).
The
1920s: a low point in colour photography
Interest
in natural colour photography sank to very low levels in Australia
during
the 1920s
after the
burst
of 1908-1914.
One reason
for the loss of interest might lie in the
trend towards the use of flexible roll black and
white films, Nearly
all of
the early
screen
plate colour processes used rigid glass plates
until the 1930s, including the autochrome,
Paget and Finlay
processes(34). The
Pictorial school
which the autochrome suited was in decline.
The new aesthetics favoured bright sunny pictures
of sharply
lit forms.
A
few enterprising amateurs like Frederick Smithies (1885-1979)
and H.J. King in Tasmania
continued
to produce stereo
autochromes using
a lightweight Verascope to record wilderness
scenes. Smithies' stereo autochromes of
the Cradle Mountain
region won prizes
at the Hobart
Amateur Photography Exhibition of 1922(35). Smithies actively campaigned for the protection
of Cradle
Mountain and
its environs through
the 1920s and 1930s, using photography
as a tool for swaying public opinion.
The
autochrome remained as the premier system of colour photography
for the amateur
through
the
1920s. Few
workers bothered with
the complex tri-separation system. An
exception lay in the printing industry.
As expensive magazines like Australia
Beautiful published by The Home began to appear,
the use of three-colour
printing, particularly for advertising,
became more common. During
the
1920s the technique
was mainly used for the reproduction
of hand-painted artwork. Very
few actual colour photographs of live
subjects were reproduced.
For
live subjects and portraiture, the only really satisfactory arrangement
lay in the
use of a
special camera that exposed
all three colour
separation negatives simultaneously.
This was usually done by means of internal
colour
filters
and reflectors
behind
the lens.
These
one shot colour cameras were quite
expensive
and difficult to keep in alignment
- only a viable device in professional
hands.
The
Jos-Pe one-shot colour camera was commercially launched in 1925.
The
Melbourne photographer
William T. Owen (1898-1979)
used this
camera to produce negatives for printing
in the trichrome carbro and trichrome
carbon processes
around 1930,
while he worked
at
the Spencer Shier Studio, later commercialising
the process for P.C.
Grossers. Several examples of Owen's
tricolour printing experiments are
held by the National
Gallery of Victoria,
including advertising
and genre studies.
In
the tricolour carbon process, the three separation negatives
were
printed
onto
carbon tissues of
complementary colour
to the taking
filters. These developed tissues,
bearing relief images, were assembled
in register
on a white
card to produce
the final
print. The carbon
tissues had to be printed by contact
in sunlight, so that no enlargement
from the
negatives
was possible.
Tricolour
carbro was a more complex process, but it permitted enlargement.
Bromide
prints would
be printed
or enlarged
from the colour separation
negatives. These bromides were
then squeegeed against colour
carbro
tissues,
which
were sensitised at
the moment of
use. A chemical reaction
takes place between the silver
image of the bromide print and
the soluble
gelatin
coating
of the
carbro tissue,
making the
tissue insoluble
in direct proportion to the density
of silver in the image. The carbro
tissue
was then
removed from
the
bromide print,
squeegeed
onto a
support, and put into hot water
to dissolve away the soluble
gelatin. The three carbro
tissues
are then
assembled on
the final white card
support in register.
In
1929, an improved version of the Paget
screen plate process
with superior
colour
rendition
and better colour
stability
was introduced
as the Finlay Colour Process (36).
This
was used for several years
by prominent overseas magazines
for
colour reproduction.
The results
possessed outstanding
colour fidelity
in comparison with the old
Paget plates so that several
Australian
workers,
notably Frank Hurley
and H.J.
King used them extensively.
Several hundred of King's
Tasmanian botanical and landscape studies
in Finlay Colour
survive,
many
of which are
of remarkable quality.
H.J. King was a deeply religious
man who sought God through
nature. He saw
the need
for colour
in photography
as
a recording and
sharing of nature with others.
The 1930s
and the shift to flexible colour film
A
new interest in colour photography grew as the 1930s dawned,
perhaps owing to the increasing use of
natural colour film for cinematography(37). Indeed, many of the early colour processes were first made
available as 16 millimetre amateur cine stock before being made
available for
taking stills.
Such
was the case with Dufaycolour, introduced as a cine stock in
1932 but not available as a roll film for
still cameras until
1935(38). This was the last of the really popular additive screen colour
processes to find favour in Australia. The expatriate Tasmanian
photographer
Mel Nicholls (1894-1985) was involved in the use and sale of
this film at an early date, and while based in London in 1937
he was one
of the cameramen who shot the Coronation for cinema release
in Dufaycolour, also taking many large-format Dufay transparencies
for the advertising
industry. These are technically impressive(39).
As
soon as Dufaycolour film became available, it was possible for
any amateur with a
brownie box camera to take competent
colour transparencies.
The colour screen was very much finer than that used for
any of the previous colour processes, and was commonly referred
to as the film's
reseau. Only the extra stage of reversal development was
needed
for a result in colour. Initially, this was misunderstood
by many users
and the films were sent to developing and printing establishments
who developed them to negative only, like a standard black
and white film. Such lack of expertise discouraged the more
casual
users, but
serious amateur photographers used Dufaycolour extensively
for the next fifteen years or so.
Dufaycolour's
rendition of hues was excellent, and the reseau was sufficiently
fine as
to be inconspicuous. But as with
all additive
screen processes, the colour screen cut down the transmitted
light and the transparencies were inherently dense. In
a projector, this
absorption of light would often cause the transparency
to heat up and buckle if it was projected for a lengthy period.
The
answer to
this problem lay in the development of three-layer 'subtractive'
film, in which highlights were represented by transparent
film, while the various colour layers would subtract light
from the
source to
provide the colours. The first of the modern subtractive
transparency films - Kodachrome - was supplied in America
as 16 millimetre
cine film stock in April 1935, but only became available
as a 35 millimetre
still stock in September 1936(40). Highly
technical and complex development techniques were required
for Kodachrome, so
that
it was not available
in Australia for some time, as no local laboratories were
equipped to handle it.
On
2 March 1936 the A.P-R. reported that 'Kodachrome
cine film is not yet available in Australia or New Zealand,
though a very small quantity is stocked to meet a demand
from outgoing
tourists who can get the film processed overseas'.
Kodachrome
film demonstrations were a feature of Sydney's Royal Agricultural
Show in March 1937(41) and the
first roll of the
Kodachrome still
film to be exposed in Australia was purportedly supplied
to the Launceston amateur H.J. King at about this time(42).
Kodachrome
was fearfully expensive in relation to other films,
including some colour films, until after World
War Two. It
is curious to note
that there was no official colour film coverage of
Australia's involvement in World War Two in the way
that Hurley had
recorded World War One(43). All
of the colour film of the war from Australian sources
is of amateur origin, much of this being 16 millimetre
Kodachrome cine stock.
The
post-war boom
The
technical story of the basic principles of colour photography
finishes with Kodachrome, on which most
of the other processes
subsequently developed are still based(44). Additive
films like Dufaycolour gradually
lost favour as the volume of subtractive film production
increased and its prices fell accordingly. The
production of separation
negatives for anything but publication or fastidious
archival printing became
a thing of the past. The 'one shot' colour camera
with its filters and beam splitting mirrors was superseded
by the
use of monopack
colour transparencies like Kodachrome.
Above and beyond all these considerations, the
attitude to colour photography was changing. Before
the war
colour had
always been
regarded as a 'specialist technique', after the
war, colour was becoming a
part of mainstream photography.
Until
the 1960s, the majority of colour images being made were transparencies
for projection,
but through
the 1970s
cheap
film processing made
colour print film the more ubiquitous photographic
mode, in spite of inherently fugitive dyes and
mediocre quality
control.
Instant
print colour films like Polacolor were introduced
in the early 1960s. The later SX-70 process was
introduced in
1972,
From
the war onwards, it becomes impossible to trace the individual
careers of colour photographers
as
they multiplied
so rapidly.
Where once a select band of technically advanced
specialists kept colour
photography to themselves, colour has, since
1945, been a viable option for any photographer,
and
cannot be so
easily
traced
as a separate line of development in itself.
Art
photographers like Max Dupain consider that the many uncontrollable
variables of colour
film
make
it less
than satisfactory as
a vehicle for artistic expression. Wilderness
Movement photographers today,
however, see the colour medium as a closer
approximation to the
reality that they wish to convey as directly
as possible.
Contemporary
photographer, David Moore, who has used colour materials in his
professional
photojournalism,
recently
observed that he
could not think of any single 'great' colour
photographs, although many
black and white photographic icons readily
came to
his mind(45). This view is shared by a number
of art photographers
and
curators. Whether
this is due to the still uncontrollable
variables of colour photography, its expense, or an
enduring prejudice
against
the literalism
of this process is not known.