877
1888, Muybridge had learned to project sequences of
his photographs on an adaptation of the magic lantern.
Also in 1888, Étienne-Jule Marey used sensitized paper
roll fi lm to invent a camera that could take separate, but
successive pictures on a moving strip of fi lm. With this
history in mind, it is noteworthy that Peter Kubelka
notes that, in fact, cinema is “not movement...Cinema
is nothing but a rapid slide projection. A slide projection
which goes in a steady rhythm: twenty-four slides per
second” (Kubelka 1978, 149).
Along with the Cinématographe, the Lumieres are
well-known in the history of photography for con-
tributing to the process of color photography with the
invention of the Autochrome. An additive process, the
Autochrome plate consisted of very fi ne grains of potato
starch used with a gelatin silver-bromide emulsion.
Autochromes were expensive and were unique images,
best viewed as a transparency: their true colors were
impossible to catch by the limited printing possibilities
at the time. The Lumières’ Autochrome plates went on
sale in June of 1907. The process remained confi ned to
Europe, especially France. The photographer Jacques
Henri Lartigue made some of the most successful Au-
tochrome images between 1912 and 1927.
In 1995, in honor of the Cinématographe’s centennial
anniversary, forty famous fi lmmakers (David Lynch,
Spike Lee, Wim Wenders, Zhang Yimou, John Boorman,
et al.) from around the world came together to create
their own fi fty-second Lumière fi lm. Using the restored
original camera forty intriguing fi lms were made by and
in tribute to the well-designed, trim, hardwood box with
a hand crank.
Carol Mavor
Biography
Auguste Lumière was born on October 19, 1862, in
Besançon France and Louis Lumière was born on
October 5, 1864, also in Besançon. Along with their
father they ran the very successful Lumière factory,
which made its fortune from the innovative glass plate
for dry-plate photography, the Etiquette bleue (blue
label), which was invented by Louis when he was a
teenager. The brothers are most famous for inventing
“cinema” through the Cinématographe, which was
patented on February 13, 1895. They shot their famous
fi fty-second Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory on
March 19, 1895. The brothers also invented an early
color photographic process, the Autochrome. For much
of his life, Auguste worked tirelessly on medical in-
ventions. After 1900, much of the production of the
Lumière plant in Lyons was oriented towards medical
research and production. Louis died on 6 June 6, 1948,
in Bandol, France and Auguste died on April 10, 1954
in Lyon, France.
See also: Brewster, Sir David; Edison, Thomas Alva;
Lantern Slides; Marey, Etienne Jules; Muybridge,
Eadweard James; and Plateau, Joseph Antoine
Ferdinand.Further Readings
Barnouw, Eric, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Cartwright, Lisa, “‘Experiments of Destruction’: Cinematic
Inscriptions of Physiology,” Representations.
Crary, Jonathan, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and
Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, MA: MIT,
1990.
Elsaesser, Thomas, editor with Adam Barker, Early Cinema:
Space, Frame, Narrative, London: British Film Institute,
1990.
Gopnik, Adam, Paris to the Moon, New York: Random House,
2000.
Kubelka, Peter, “The Theory of Metrical Film,” in The Avant-
Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, edited by
P. Adams Sitney, New York: New York University Press,
1978.
Sitney, P. Adams, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.LUMMIS, CHARLES FLETCHER
(1859–1928)
American photographer, journalist, publisher
After graduation from Harvard College, Lummis took up
a career as a journalist in Ohio. When offered a position
in Los Angeles he walked across country and published
the account of his journey, A Tramp Across the Continent
(1892). He covered the Apache revolt led by Geronimo
in 1885 for the Los Angeles Times, and renewed his
interest in the cultures of the American Southwest.
He moved to New Mexico for his health in 1887 and
assisted archaeologist Adolph Bandelier for whom he
photographed in the southwest and Latin America. His
photographs served as the basis for the illustrations
for an ethnographic study of Pueblo Indian people. In
a fi ve year period, 1888–1893, he photographed the
land, people, and dwellings, the ruins and traces of past
civilizations, and persistent rituals in the Southwest,
Central America, and Peru. In all he made an estimated
10,000 glass plate negatives during his lifetime. Those
made after his return to Los Angeles record the cultural
heritage of southern California. He became the foremost
proponent for the recognition and preservation of the
unique cultural heritage of southern California and the
American Southwest through his writing for Century
and the illustrated magazine which he edited, Land of
Sunshine (Out West after 1902) and his books, including
The Land of Poco Tiempo (1893), and Some Strange
Corners of Our Country: The Wonderland of the South-
west (1892). Mesa, Canon and Pueblo (1925), illustrated