Wednesday, April 29, 2009

A collection of very early colour photographs, some of which are more than 100 years old, will be on display at Exbury Gardens for five months, opening this Friday. Louis Lumiére invented and patented the first commercially viable colour photography process - the autochrome - in 1903, and mass production of the autochrome plates began in 1907. The fabulously rich banker Lionel de Rothschild, who was also an enthusiastic and expert amateur photographer, probably received some plates before commercialisation, and started to experiment with them. The above photo of a tiger at London Zoo is believed to have been taken as early as 1906. It is part of a huge collection of autochromes, which will be exhibited at Exbury Gardens. The photos show the Edwardian world, which we tend to think of as a “black-and-white age”, in full colour. The exhibition opens this Friday, and admission is free to all who buy a ticket into the Gardens.

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