hand coloring and hand toning History Photography

hand coloring and hand toning

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 23:22:32 | History Photography

The practise of applying colour by hand onto monochromatic photographs was common from almost the very beginnings of photography until well into the mid-twentieth century, by which time commercially viable colour processes had been developed and replaced the need to add colours to a black and white print. To consider the use and need for hand colouring it is important to appreciate the expectancies of photographers in the early nineteenth century. It was soon after the advent of the Daguerreotype and Calotype that photographers questioned their art's inability to render natural colours. Despite several attempts by a succession of inventors throughout the 1800s, it would not be until 1907 that the Lumiere brothers were successful in creating and manufacturing their Autochrome process. Yet the cumbersome nature and expense of early color processes ensured that hand-coloring persisted.

The technique flourished especially as a service offered by the portrait photographer. By the end of the nineteenth century, many establishments offered not only delicate coloured additions to the portrait but sometimes would completely over-paint the photograph in oils, watercolour, or crayons to such an extent that the resulting hybrid generally presented the visual characteristics of both painting and photograph with the aesthetic qualities of neither. Often the best colourists had been miniature portrait painters whose craft had been superseded by the advent of the photograph. These painters found their skills were in demand for applying colour to glass plates or prints and retouching—removing technical defects and improving the appearance of the subject. Many photographers who had higher aspirations than the family portrait found such practise derisory to the seriousness of their work.

Travel photographers aiming their work at the popular market often coloured their prints as well as the lantern slides used in their lectures. Burton Holmes, an American photographer active between the 1880s and 1950s, was a well-known producer of coloured glass slides to the popular market. In later years Holmes's slides were hand painted to such a high standard by a team he himself trained that the results compared favorably to slides produced by modern colour film (Colebeck, 14).

The humble picture postcard was initially coloured by hand in the late nineteenth century. Stencils were produced to allow block colours to be applied selectively by teams of workers in factories throughout the world. As the popularity of postcards grew, this labour-intensive method was mostly replaced by machinery by the late 1920s.

Whether by hand or machine, colouring had initially been used to replicate a natural rendition; it also eventually created its own aesthetic, one largely asso ciated with the glamour and film industries. By the 1930s, reproductions in popular magazines were often from hand-coloured photographs. Hollywood film stars were seen delicately coloured at a time when the movies in which they starred were shot in black and white. Even after the invention of Techni-colour, the cinema industry in the 1940s and into the 1950s still employed hand colourists, primarily to work on movie stills and publicity shots. As films were often shot under controlled lighting in the studio, the still photographer with slower lenses than the film cameraman would produce their work in monochrome, with the publicity departments reproducing their prints from hand-coloured photographs.

It was common in the 1930s for portrait photographers to supply clients with hand-coloured prints. The methods of colouring varied depending on the intensity of colour required. Normally, a sepia-toned print was used as the warmth of the base provided a better rendering to the colours of the inks, dyes, and paints used, and also ensured none of the print would be seen as black and white. Many books offered both the professional and amateur photographer advice on the technique of hand colouring while simultaneously expressing a general mistrust of this practice, especially for the serious photographer.

Public taste for colour, even in its crudest form, had induced portrait photographers to offer to their customers coloured photographs which, sometimes, are far removed from works of art. However, specialists in such work may plead extenuating circumstances; for example, severe competition (Clerc, 463).

The mediums recommended by this and other volumes had different characteristics and results depending on the qualities of the print. Coloured dyes adhered best to glossy prints while smoother matte papers responded better to water colours. Pastel crayons were suitable especially if the user had an understanding of sketching, though the complications suggested by the amount of formulae required to treat the print prior to working with oil paints would deter all but the most dedicated. The air brush was employed for its smoothness in applying colour, usually after areas of the print had been masked off, and brushes of various sizes used to highlight detail.

As colour films became cheaper and thus more widely used, the need for hand colouring receded. Designers still used selective hand colouring in advertisements and especially fashion magazines well into the 1950s, often using blocks of colours in a similar method to the picture postcards of the turn of the century. Though occasionally still used, and replicated now by computer retouching, it is the distinctive and recognisable look of the hand-coloured print that is its use and value long after colour photography has become the norm, employed occasionally, in most instances purely for its nostalgic appeal.

Mike Crawford See also: Vernacular Photography

Karin Lau Photography

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