Color photographs of Venice of the 1890s
Photo © bigpicture.ru
These color photographs depict Venice of the 1890s with its famous canals, beautiful palaces, and the daily life of the citizens. Only 30 years earlier the city belonged to Austria, and since 1866 it was annexed to the newly formed Italian kingdom.
The images were painted in natural colors using photochrome - the process of creating color images based on colored photonegatives by direct transfer to lithographic printing plates. It is considered a subtype of chromolithography.
The inventor of the process is Hans Jacob Schmidt. Beginning in the 1890s, photochrome has become very popular. But at the same time, color photography was not yet able to compete with photochrome due to the complexity of the technology.
The last printer working on photochromic technology ceased its work in 1970.
