DOI chapter:
Colour photography
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47958#0032
COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
the long range oi rolling woods whose aspect still rings and echoes
subtly in your senses, is not without a secret influence, inducing the
whole orchestration to vary its tone some fine and delicate degrees
further.
But the Lumiere plate, freed from the frailties of the human eye,
sternly represses these chromatic love-matches and quarrels. The
colour that it registers is the native colour : the valid, separate
blue of the sea—the independent gold of the shore—the green
of the grass as the grass would seem if the world were one vast
prairie. The result, when the eye turns from scene to picture,
from original to unflinching reflection, is a sharp sense of shock,
an acute metallic thrill. The senses, perhaps, strive to reorganise
the colours, attempt to mollify the rigour; and it is possible
(although it cannot yet be stated with any certainty) that they
do manage to work the colours together into something more
nearly approaching the suavity of the image they derive from
Nature. But it is a feat which they are physiologically debarred
from performing successfully : the difference between the size of
the three-dimensional original and the two-dimensional repro-
duction inevitably baffles them ; and the autochrome landscape
remains something of a cold bath, a little discomforting and
austere,—something very far removed from either that sensuous
illusion called nature, or that voluptuous reality called art.
“ But herein,” it may be urged, “ lies, surely, one clear and
obvious method of creation. Since the effect of the picture is
so different from the effect of the original, and since ‘ Art is
art because it is not nature,’ may it not be that it is by dint of
just this piquant and acerb disparity that the autochromist will
be enabled to provide beautiful and enduring bodies for emotions
which would otherwise remain intangible and untransmittable.
Creation by Manipulation, you point out, is clearly barred.
Granted ; but what about a second pathway, Creation by Pure
Technique ? Does it not seem as though this extra keenness
and acidity of the colours, this slight change in their relations, pro-
vided the autochromatic equivalent to that exchange of colour for
tone, of nature-quality for process-quality, which may be regarded
as one of the proofs of the monochromist’s claim to the royal
rank of artist ? ”
It is a good argument and entirely pertinent ; and it would, in
addition, be entirely conclusive if it dealt with any other element
in life than this extraordinary element of colour. Were the modifi-
cation a matter of tonal-modification, or even of lineal, then the
6
the long range oi rolling woods whose aspect still rings and echoes
subtly in your senses, is not without a secret influence, inducing the
whole orchestration to vary its tone some fine and delicate degrees
further.
But the Lumiere plate, freed from the frailties of the human eye,
sternly represses these chromatic love-matches and quarrels. The
colour that it registers is the native colour : the valid, separate
blue of the sea—the independent gold of the shore—the green
of the grass as the grass would seem if the world were one vast
prairie. The result, when the eye turns from scene to picture,
from original to unflinching reflection, is a sharp sense of shock,
an acute metallic thrill. The senses, perhaps, strive to reorganise
the colours, attempt to mollify the rigour; and it is possible
(although it cannot yet be stated with any certainty) that they
do manage to work the colours together into something more
nearly approaching the suavity of the image they derive from
Nature. But it is a feat which they are physiologically debarred
from performing successfully : the difference between the size of
the three-dimensional original and the two-dimensional repro-
duction inevitably baffles them ; and the autochrome landscape
remains something of a cold bath, a little discomforting and
austere,—something very far removed from either that sensuous
illusion called nature, or that voluptuous reality called art.
“ But herein,” it may be urged, “ lies, surely, one clear and
obvious method of creation. Since the effect of the picture is
so different from the effect of the original, and since ‘ Art is
art because it is not nature,’ may it not be that it is by dint of
just this piquant and acerb disparity that the autochromist will
be enabled to provide beautiful and enduring bodies for emotions
which would otherwise remain intangible and untransmittable.
Creation by Manipulation, you point out, is clearly barred.
Granted ; but what about a second pathway, Creation by Pure
Technique ? Does it not seem as though this extra keenness
and acidity of the colours, this slight change in their relations, pro-
vided the autochromatic equivalent to that exchange of colour for
tone, of nature-quality for process-quality, which may be regarded
as one of the proofs of the monochromist’s claim to the royal
rank of artist ? ”
It is a good argument and entirely pertinent ; and it would, in
addition, be entirely conclusive if it dealt with any other element
in life than this extraordinary element of colour. Were the modifi-
cation a matter of tonal-modification, or even of lineal, then the
6