autochrome

[ aw-tuh-krohm ]

noun

, Photography.

1. a material once used for color photography, consisting of a photographic emulsion applied over a multicolored screen of minute starch grains dyed red, green, and blue-violet.

Word History and Origins

Origin of autochrome¹

First recorded in 1905–10; auto- ¹ + -chrome

Example Sentences

One, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” mixes a muted autochrome look with naturalistic lighting to conjure a mood of impending doom.

From Los Angeles Times

The process working inside the hogfish is similar to the earliest method of color photography, the autochrome process, in which light travels through plates covered in millions of tiny red, green and blue-colored potato starch grains to produce color.

From Salon

These autochrome plates produced a unique image that could then be processed into a lantern slide or a four-color print.

From New York Times

The colors and luminosity of John Cimon Warburg’s “Peggy in the Garden,” a photo taken in 1909 at the family’s villa on the French Riviera, bear an extraordinary, even if perhaps serendipitous, resemblance to John Singer Sargent’s painting “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose,” which had been a popular hit at the Royal Academy in 1887 and is shown here along with Warburg’s autochrome image.

From New York Times

A new book, “Lartigue: Life in Color,” coming in February from Abrams, collects this little-known work for the first time, from the Autochrome images he made in his teens to his work in color film in the sixties and seventies.

From The New Yorker