This tender domestic scene looks like it could be a painting by John Singer Sargent or even Mary Cassatt, but it is actually a photograph made with the first commercially successful color process. Earlier techniques were labor-intensive, but after additive color screen plates were commercialized as autochromes by brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1907, they became widely used until the 1930s.

Autochromes are unique positive images on glass that gain their color through miniscule grains of dyed potato starch that act as light filters over a gelatin silver emulsion. Similar to slides or transparencies, they are best viewed with a light source, whether projected or put into special viewers. The long exposure time means autochrome scenes are often quiet and still, but the ease of creating color images with a commercially available plate made it possible to capture intimate, casual moments like this one.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)