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3. Wavelengths and Potato Starch: The (Im)material in Colour Photography

Nathalie Boulouch (author)

Chapter of: Colour Matters: Exploring Chromatic Materialities in the Long Nineteenth Century (1798-1914)

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Title	3. Wavelengths and Potato Starch
Subtitle	The (Im)material in Colour Photography
Contributor	Nathalie Boulouch (author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0501.03
Landing page	http://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0501/chapters/10.11647/obp.0501.03
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Copyright	Nathalie Boulouch
Publisher	Open Book Publishers
Published on	2026-05-11
Long abstract	Considered sorely lacking when photography was invented, colour is one of the major advancements in the history of nineteenth-century photography. This paper focuses on the period between the invention of the interferential colour photography process by the French physicist Gabriel Lippmann in 1891 and the invention of the Autochrome technique by the French industrialists Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1907. It discusses the tension between immateriality and materiality in the history of the first colour photographs. While the colours in the interferential process have no materiality, the singularity of the Autochrome technique derives from its use of potato starch grains dyed with red, green and blue aniline dyes. While their ways of recording colour are completely different, however, these processes use a common means of visualization: projection, which produces an immaterial and temporalised image.
Print length	18 pages
Language	English (Original)
THEMA	AGA PDX NHTB DSBF JHMC
BISAC	ART015260 HIS054000 SCI034000 LIT004130 DES003000 SOC002010
Keywords	Colour studies Material culture History of science Art history (long nineteenth century) Pigments and dyes Empire and identity

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Contributors

Nathalie Boulouch

(author)

Associate Professor at University of Rennes 2

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-5742-4105

Nathalie Boulouch is an Associate Professor at Rennes 2 University (France), where she teaches history of contemporary art and history of photography. Her research focuses on the history of colour photography and of projected photographic image in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of Le Ciel est bleu (2011) and recently co-edited Que fait la couleur à la photographie?Techniques, usages, controverses (2025). In 2017, she was associate curator of *Slides. The History of Projected Photography *(Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne). Between 2020 and 2023 she worked on a project on interferential colour photography hosted by Photo Elysée (Lausanne), as part of which she was associate curator of Gabriel Lippmann. La photographie des couleurs (2023).

References

‘An Interview with Mr. Edouard [sic] J. Steichen’, Photography, 16 July (1907), 45–47.
Berget, Alphonse, Photographie des couleurs par la méthode interférentielle de M. Lippmann (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1891).
Boulouch, Nathalie, ‘Figurez-vous un écran... La photographie projetée autour de 1900’, in Diapositive. Histoire de la photographie projetée, ed. by Nathalie Boulouch, Anne Lacoste, Olivier Lugon and Carole Sandrin (Lausanne: Musée de l’Elysée; Editions Noir sur blanc, 2017), pp. 162–75.
——, Le ciel est bleu. Une histoire de la photographie couleur (Paris: Textuel, 2011).
——, ‘Un problème, deux idées, trois controverses. Brève histoire de la réeption de la photographie des couleurs jusqu’à 1907’, Recueil des travaux de l’Académie des sciences, lettres et arts d’Agen (2022), 27–34.
——, ‘Gabriel Lippmann et la photographie des couleurs: au prisme de l’actualité de la recherche’, Rundbrief Fotografie, 2 (2023), 8–21, https://doi.org/10.1515/rbf-2023-2004.
Bouty, E. and H. Pellat, Letter dated 20 January 1905 (proposal for the Nobel Prize in Physics), in Registers of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (1905), 133–34.
Dalmas, Comte de, ‘Propos sur l’autochromie’, Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, 4 (1926), 112–13.
Davison, George, ‘À l’étranger. Angleterre: Diapositives pour projection’, Bulletin du Photo-Club de Paris (1896), 418.
de la Sizeranne, Robert, ‘Le bilan de l’impressionnisme’, in Questions esthétiques contemporaines (Paris: Hachette, 1904), pp. 51–103.
Dewhurst, Wynford, ‘What is Impressionism?’, The Contemporary Review, March 1911, 294.
Dillaye Frédéric, ‘L’aquarelle par la gomme à plusieurs couches’, La Revue de photographie (1905), 202–10.
du Hauron, Louis Ducos, ‘Solution physique de la reproduction des couleurs par la photographie’, in La Triplice photographique des couleurs et l’imprimerie, ed. by Alcide Ducos du Hauron (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1897), pp. 457–59.
Duret, Théodore, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes (Paris: H. Floury, 1906) [expanded reprint of an 1878 brochure].
Fourtier, Henri, ‘La photographie des couleurs. Expériences de MM. A. et L. Lumière, d’après la méthode Lippmann’, Bulletin du Photo-Club de Paris (1893), 169–73.
Gandolfo Jean-Paul, Lavedrine Bertrand, avec la collaboration de Christine Capderou et de Ronan Guinée, L’Autochrome Lumière : secrets d’atelier et défis industriels (Paris: CTHS, 2009).
Gay-Lussac, Joseph-Louis, ‘Rapport fait à la chambre des pairs par Gay-Lussac à la séance du 30 juillet 1839’, in An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Various Processes of the Daguerreotype and the Diorama by Daguerre, ed. by Beaumont Newhall (New York: Winter House Ltd., 1971), p. 33.
Hammond, Anne, ‘Impressionist Theory and the Autochrome’, History of Photography, 2 (1991), 96–100.
Lippmann, Gabriel, ‘La photographie des couleurs’, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences, T. 112 (1891), 274–75.
Maisch, Fréd D., ‘La plaque Autochrome dans ses rapports avec la théorie des couleurs de Young-Helmholtz’ (translated from Photo-Era), La Photographie, 2 (1910), 34–37.
Mauclair, Camille, L’impressionisme, son histoire, son esthétique, ses maîtres (Paris: Librairie de l’art ancien et moderne, 1904).
Nobel Prize ceremony speech, Archives of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, 10 December 1908, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1908/ceremony-speech/.
Personnaz, Antonin, ‘A propos des autochromes. La valeur esthétique de ce procédé’, Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, 8 (1909), 153–63.
——, ‘Apropos of autochromes’, British Journal of Photography, colour suppl., 3 (September 1909), 68.
Puyo, Constant, ‘À propos des envois de Vienne et de Hambourg au Salon de Paris’, Bulletin du Photo-Club de Paris, 90 (July 1898), 219–27.
Rood, Ogden N., Modern Chromatics with Applications to Art and Industry (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879).
Sherman Paul D., Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century: the Young-Helmholtz-Maxwell Theory (Bristol: Adam Hilge Ltd., 1981).
Signac, Paul, D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme, ed. by Françoise Cachin (Paris: Hermann, 1964) [1st edn 1899].
Steichen, Eduard, ‘Color Photography’, Camera Work, 22 (1908), 13–24.
——, ‘Les harmonies de couleurs et la plaque Autochrome’, La Revue de photographie (1908), 7–13.
von Humboldt, Alexander, Letter of 7 February 1839 to the Duchess Friederike von Anhalt-Dessau, reproduced in Antigone, 14 (1990), 9.
Wallon, Etienne, ‘La photographie des couleurs et les plaques autochromes’, Conférence faire devant la Société française de photographie le 27 juin 1907, 15 (1907), 336–58.
——, ‘Autochromie et trichromie’, Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, 19 (1908), 381–402.

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3. Wavelengths and Potato Starch: The (Im)material in Colour Photography

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Metadata
Title	3. Wavelengths and Potato Starch
Subtitle	The (Im)material in Colour Photography
Contributor	Nathalie Boulouch (author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0501.03
Landing page	http://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0501/chapters/10.11647/obp.0501.03
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Copyright	Nathalie Boulouch
Publisher	Open Book Publishers
Published on	2026-05-11
Long abstract	Considered sorely lacking when photography was invented, colour is one of the major advancements in the history of nineteenth-century photography. This paper focuses on the period between the invention of the interferential colour photography process by the French physicist Gabriel Lippmann in 1891 and the invention of the Autochrome technique by the French industrialists Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1907. It discusses the tension between immateriality and materiality in the history of the first colour photographs. While the colours in the interferential process have no materiality, the singularity of the Autochrome technique derives from its use of potato starch grains dyed with red, green and blue aniline dyes. While their ways of recording colour are completely different, however, these processes use a common means of visualization: projection, which produces an immaterial and temporalised image.
Print length	18 pages
Language	English (Original)
THEMA	AGA PDX NHTB DSBF JHMC
BISAC	ART015260 HIS054000 SCI034000 LIT004130 DES003000 SOC002010
Keywords	Colour studies Material culture History of science Art history (long nineteenth century) Pigments and dyes Empire and identity

Locations

PDF

HTML

Publisher Website

Contributors

Nathalie Boulouch

(author)

Associate Professor at University of Rennes 2

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-5742-4105

References

‘An Interview with Mr. Edouard [sic] J. Steichen’, Photography, 16 July (1907), 45–47.
Berget, Alphonse, Photographie des couleurs par la méthode interférentielle de M. Lippmann (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1891).
Boulouch, Nathalie, ‘Figurez-vous un écran... La photographie projetée autour de 1900’, in Diapositive. Histoire de la photographie projetée, ed. by Nathalie Boulouch, Anne Lacoste, Olivier Lugon and Carole Sandrin (Lausanne: Musée de l’Elysée; Editions Noir sur blanc, 2017), pp. 162–75.
——, Le ciel est bleu. Une histoire de la photographie couleur (Paris: Textuel, 2011).
——, ‘Un problème, deux idées, trois controverses. Brève histoire de la réeption de la photographie des couleurs jusqu’à 1907’, Recueil des travaux de l’Académie des sciences, lettres et arts d’Agen (2022), 27–34.
——, ‘Gabriel Lippmann et la photographie des couleurs: au prisme de l’actualité de la recherche’, Rundbrief Fotografie, 2 (2023), 8–21, https://doi.org/10.1515/rbf-2023-2004.
Bouty, E. and H. Pellat, Letter dated 20 January 1905 (proposal for the Nobel Prize in Physics), in Registers of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (1905), 133–34.
Dalmas, Comte de, ‘Propos sur l’autochromie’, Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, 4 (1926), 112–13.
Davison, George, ‘À l’étranger. Angleterre: Diapositives pour projection’, Bulletin du Photo-Club de Paris (1896), 418.
de la Sizeranne, Robert, ‘Le bilan de l’impressionnisme’, in Questions esthétiques contemporaines (Paris: Hachette, 1904), pp. 51–103.
Dewhurst, Wynford, ‘What is Impressionism?’, The Contemporary Review, March 1911, 294.
Dillaye Frédéric, ‘L’aquarelle par la gomme à plusieurs couches’, La Revue de photographie (1905), 202–10.
du Hauron, Louis Ducos, ‘Solution physique de la reproduction des couleurs par la photographie’, in La Triplice photographique des couleurs et l’imprimerie, ed. by Alcide Ducos du Hauron (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1897), pp. 457–59.
Duret, Théodore, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes (Paris: H. Floury, 1906) [expanded reprint of an 1878 brochure].
Fourtier, Henri, ‘La photographie des couleurs. Expériences de MM. A. et L. Lumière, d’après la méthode Lippmann’, Bulletin du Photo-Club de Paris (1893), 169–73.
Gandolfo Jean-Paul, Lavedrine Bertrand, avec la collaboration de Christine Capderou et de Ronan Guinée, L’Autochrome Lumière : secrets d’atelier et défis industriels (Paris: CTHS, 2009).
Gay-Lussac, Joseph-Louis, ‘Rapport fait à la chambre des pairs par Gay-Lussac à la séance du 30 juillet 1839’, in An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Various Processes of the Daguerreotype and the Diorama by Daguerre, ed. by Beaumont Newhall (New York: Winter House Ltd., 1971), p. 33.
Hammond, Anne, ‘Impressionist Theory and the Autochrome’, History of Photography, 2 (1991), 96–100.
Lippmann, Gabriel, ‘La photographie des couleurs’, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences, T. 112 (1891), 274–75.
Maisch, Fréd D., ‘La plaque Autochrome dans ses rapports avec la théorie des couleurs de Young-Helmholtz’ (translated from Photo-Era), La Photographie, 2 (1910), 34–37.
Mauclair, Camille, L’impressionisme, son histoire, son esthétique, ses maîtres (Paris: Librairie de l’art ancien et moderne, 1904).
Nobel Prize ceremony speech, Archives of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, 10 December 1908, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1908/ceremony-speech/.
Personnaz, Antonin, ‘A propos des autochromes. La valeur esthétique de ce procédé’, Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, 8 (1909), 153–63.
——, ‘Apropos of autochromes’, British Journal of Photography, colour suppl., 3 (September 1909), 68.
Puyo, Constant, ‘À propos des envois de Vienne et de Hambourg au Salon de Paris’, Bulletin du Photo-Club de Paris, 90 (July 1898), 219–27.
Rood, Ogden N., Modern Chromatics with Applications to Art and Industry (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879).
Sherman Paul D., Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century: the Young-Helmholtz-Maxwell Theory (Bristol: Adam Hilge Ltd., 1981).
Signac, Paul, D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme, ed. by Françoise Cachin (Paris: Hermann, 1964) [1st edn 1899].
Steichen, Eduard, ‘Color Photography’, Camera Work, 22 (1908), 13–24.
——, ‘Les harmonies de couleurs et la plaque Autochrome’, La Revue de photographie (1908), 7–13.
von Humboldt, Alexander, Letter of 7 February 1839 to the Duchess Friederike von Anhalt-Dessau, reproduced in Antigone, 14 (1990), 9.
Wallon, Etienne, ‘La photographie des couleurs et les plaques autochromes’, Conférence faire devant la Société française de photographie le 27 juin 1907, 15 (1907), 336–58.
——, ‘Autochromie et trichromie’, Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, 19 (1908), 381–402.