Today’s summer school session is all about color.

On this date in 1904, The Parisian brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière presented their patented color photographic process, the Autochrome, to the French Academy of Sciences. The Autochrome was the first commercially feasible color photographic process; the first time photographers could reliably produce color images.

This is date is also the birthday of one of the great color photographers of the 20th century, Pete Turner. Turner, born in 1934 in Albany, New York, has had a long history of using color as subject. His photographs contain raw, punchy often startling color and have been like that since long before it was fashionable to do so.

Some Autochrome and Pete Turner images:

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Some links for this session

• The Lumière brothers
• Autochrome images – from the American Museum of Photography
• Pete Turner’s The Color of Jazz Book at Amazon
• Pete Turner’s website