I saw a photograph the other day that really struck me. It was a color photo from 1908.

1908? This can't be! That would put it in the earliest days of color photography but sure enough it wasn't a typo. It turns out that a 96-year old woman in Buffalo, Charlotte Albright, donated two early photos of her mother, Charlotte Spaulding to the The George Eastman International Museum of Photography here in Rochester, New York.

They are autochromes, an early process that used glass plates and potato starch granules, each dyed red, blue, or green to make it even more exciting they were taken by Edward Steichen one of America's greatest photographers! In 2006, a Steichen image broke the auction record for the sale of a photograph by garnering a $2.9 million dollar bid.

Click to see these elegant images in all heir glory!

These two images look amazingly beautiful don't they? The soft tones give them the aura of an impressionist painting. I'll bet Renoir would have loved this process invented by his fellow countrymen Auguste and Louis Lumiere.

Paul Schwartz blogged about his attempts at glass plate photography here. I wonder if he will move up to autochrome process now?

The George Eastman House is a real treasure where these autochromes are now on display. There is also a great Ansel Adams Exhibition showing through September 3rd. A few our regular blog contributors and I attended a black and white event there to celebrate it's opening. Click to see if you can spot four Kodak bloggers in this picture (there are a couple of spouses in the mix as well). Oh, and a little pug who has starred on 1,000 Words on more than one occasion! I wonder how this crew would have looked in an autochrome? Where did I put my spare potato starch? ;-)

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