NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 9film in 1895, a local gazette trumpeted,
“We have already recorded and repro-
duced spoken words. We can now record
and play back life. We will be able to see
our families again long after they are
gone.’’ Indeed, the Lumières not only
made history with their culture-
changing camera and new photographic
processes; they preserved it.
The Lumières trained camera opera-
tors to use the invention and then travel
all over the world. They showed the Lu-
mières’ films to new audiences and also
recorded their own footage of local events
in the places they visited. Gabriel Veyre
set out for Central America, the veteran
soldier Félix Mesguich filmed in North
Africa, and Charles Moisson headed for
Russia, where he filmed the pomp and
splendor of the crowning of the last tsar,
Nicholas II, in 1896. Between 1895 and
1905, the Lumières would make more
than 1,400 films, many of which have
been preserved to this day.The Quest for Color
As the cinema grew popular, the brothers
began to turn their attention to new proj-
ects. They focused their ever present
curiosity on tackling another technical
challenge: color photography.
Color photography did exist, but the
process of creating it was complicated
and time-consuming. The Lumière
brothers’ solution had a profound effect
on the emerging field. Patented in 1903,
their process, called Autochrome Lu-
mière, involved covering a glass plate
with a thin wash of tiny potato starch
grains dyed red, green, and blue. This
granular wash created a filter, and gave
autochromes the soft, pointillistic qual-
ity of a painting. A thin layer of emulsion
was added to the filter, and when the platewas flipped and exposed to light, the re-
sulting image could be developed into
a transparency.
The autochrome remained the most
widely used photographic plate capable
of capturing color for more than 30 years.
Magazines like National Geographic sent
its photographers to capture the world
with autochromes, the relative portabil-
ity of which made documentary field-
work easier. The success of the brothers’
invention is reflected in the archives of
the National Geographic Society, which
house almost 15,000 autochrome plates,
one of the largest collections in the world.
This family of inventors lived up to
their name—lumière means “light” in
French—illuminating life as they ar-
chived the past, captured the unseen, and
created filmmakers and audiences alike.—Pedro García MartínTHE FIRST
PICTURE SHOWS
Customers gather
outside a Lumière
theater in France,
1897, as cinema was
becoming a part of
everyday French life.
RUE DES ARCHIVES/ALBUM