Beautifully Vivid Portraits from the Early Days of Color Photography in 1913

Electrical engineer Mervyn O'Gorman captured these beautifully vibrant photos of his daughter Christina at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, England in 1913. The century-old photos depict Christina wearing vivid red clothes, the saturated hues standing out in sharp contrast to the muted tones of the background. Long exposure times and wider apertures create a shallow depth of field, giving the images a soft, dreamlike quality. Timeless in appearance, the gorgeous shots look like they could've been captured during any era, from the days before World War I to this contemporary age.

O'Gorman achieved the lovely colors through the Autochrome Lumire process, a technique that used glass plates coated in potato starches to filter pictures with dye. His remaining images are regularly featured in exhibitions of early color photos from over a century ago. Although O'Gorman passed away in 1958, little was recorded about his daughter Christina's life aside from this collection of portraits.


via [PetaPixel], [Mashable], [National Media Museum]

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