Behold the Very First Color Photograph (1861): Taken by Scottish Physicist & Poet James Clerk Maxwell

Since its historical ori­gins because the cam­era obscu­ra, the pho­to­graph­ic cam­period has at all times mim­ic­ked the human eye, permit­ing gentle to enter an aper­ture, then professional­ject­ing a picture the other way up. Renais­sance artists relied on the cam­period obscu­ra to sharp­en their very own visu­al per­spec­tives. But it wasn’t till pictures—the abil­i­ty to repro­duce the obscu­ra’s photos—that the rudi­males­ta­ry arti­fi­cial eye started evolv­ing the identical com­plex struc­tures we depend on for our personal visu­al acu­ity: lens­es for sharp­ness, vari­ready aper­tures, shut­ter speeds, focus con­trols…. Only when it started to appear that pho­tog­ra­phy would possibly vie with the oth­er nice arts did the devel­op­ment of cam­period tech­nol­o­gy take off. And it moved fast­ly.

Between the time of the first pho­to­graph in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and 1861, pho­tog­ra­phy had superior suf­fi­cient­ly that physi­cist James Clerk Maxwell—recognized for his “Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment—produced the primary col­or pho­to­graph that didn’t imme­di­ate­ly fade or require hand paint­ing (above).

The Scot­tish sci­en­tist selected to take a pic­ture of a tar­tan rib­bon, “cre­at­ed,” writes Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, “by pho­tograph­ing it three times through red, blue, and yel­low fil­ters, then recom­bin­ing the images into one col­or com­pos­ite.” Maxwell’s three-col­or technique was intend­ed to mim­ic the way in which the attention course of­es col­or, based mostly on the­o­ries he had elab­o­rat­ed in an 1855 paper.

Maxwell’s many oth­er accom­plish­ments are inclined to over­shad­ow his col­or pho­tog­ra­phy (and his poet­ry!). Nonethe­much less, the poly­math thinker ush­ered in a rev­o­lu­tion in pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion, nearly as an apart. “It’s easy to for­get,“ writes BBC pic­ture edi­tor, Phil Coomes, “that not long ago news agen­cies were trans­mit­ting their wire pho­tographs as colour sep­a­ra­tions, usu­al­ly cyan, magen­ta, and yellow—a process that relied on Clerk Maxwell’s dis­cov­ery. Indeed, even the lat­est dig­i­tal cam­era relies on the sep­a­ra­tion method to cap­ture light.” And but, com­pared to the usu­al velocity of pho­to­graph­ic advance­ment, the method took a while to ful­ly refine.

Maxwell cre­at­ed the picture with the assistance of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Thomas Sut­ton, inven­tor of the sin­gle lens reflex cam­period, however his inter­est lay prin­ci­pal­ly in its demon­stra­tion of his col­or the­o­ry, not its appli­ca­tion to pho­tog­ra­phy in gen­er­al. Six­teen years lat­er, the repro­duc­tion of col­or had not superior sig­nif­i­cant­ly, although a sub­trac­tive technique allowed extra sub­tle­ty of sunshine and shade, as you possibly can see within the 1877 examination­ple above by Louis Ducos du Hau­ron. Even so, these 9­teenth-cen­tu­ry photos nonetheless can­not com­pete for vibran­cy and life­like­ness with hand-col­ored pho­tos from the peri­od. Despite seem­ing arti­fi­cial, hand-tint­ed photos like these of 1860s Samu­rai Japan introduced a star­tling imme­di­a­cy to their sub­jects in a method that ear­ly col­or pho­tog­ra­phy didn’t.

It wasn’t till the ear­ly 20^th century—with the devel­op­ment of col­or course of­es by Gabriel Lipp­man and the Sanger Shep­herd firm—that col­or got here into its personal. Leo Tol­stoy appeared ear­ly within the cen­tu­ry in bril­liant full col­or pho­tos. Paris got here alive in col­or photos dur­ing WWI. And Sarah Angeli­na Acland, a pio­neer­ing Eng­lish pho­tog­ra­ph­er, took the picture above in 1900 utilizing the Sanger Shep­herd technique. That course of—patented, mar­ket­ed, and bought—totally improved upon Maxwell’s outcomes, however its fundamental oper­a­tion was close to­ly the identical: three photos, pink, inexperienced, and blue, com­bined into one.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this put up appeared on our website in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

The First Col­or Por­trait of Leo Tol­stoy, and Oth­er Amaz­ing Col­or Pho­tos of Czarist Rus­sia (1908)

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian based mostly in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness