"IF
WE ARE GOING TO HAVE COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS, FOR HEAVEN'S
SAKE LET'S HAVE A RIOT OF COLOUR, NONE OF YOUR WISHY-WASHY
HAND-TINTED EFFECTS"
With this
characteristically forthright statement, delivered in
an address entitled 'Why Colour?' to the Royal Photographic
Society in December 1932, Madame Yevonde set out her
whole approach to the new medium with disarming candour
and finality.
The VIVEX
process, with which Madame became acquainted around
1930, was a subtractive process, a variant of Trichrome
Carbro, which in turn was derived from the Carbon process.
It employed three negative plates - cyan, magenta and
yellow, for the full colour range - which could be exposed
in a number of ways. Madame Yevonde settled upon two
methods, the first of them involving an automatic repeating
camera back which fitted onto the back of an ordinary
plate camera. The negative plates were moved in succession
by clockwork behind appropriate colour filters during
exposure, which typically lasted some 2 - 3 seconds.
The obvious drawback of this arrangement was that any
subject movement during exposure meant that the three
plates did not exactly match, leading to registration
problems at the printing stage. The second method of
exposure was by means of the specially designed 'one-shot'
VIVEX Tri-Colour Camera (Model A) in which the three
plates were all exposed simultaneously, thereby eliminating
at a stroke any possible differences between the images
on the three plates.
The three
negative plates were processed separately to produce
the separations required for printing. The three images
were then printed one on top of the other by hand and
eye to obtain the final print.
It was at
this stage that the unusual sophistication of the VIVEX
process became apparent. During processing, the gelatin
layer obtained from each plate was transferred to a
thin gelatin sheet, to act as a temporary support during
printing. This gave the printer an opportunity to correct
any faults in registration by coaxing the image back
into correct registration again, always provided that
the degree of movement had not been excessive. Similar
faults in registration arising from occasional refraction
problems with the one-shot camera could also be corrected
in the same way. In addition, the process provided almost
unlimited scope for retouching to remove any unsightly
blemishes.
The fact
that the process employed three colour plates which
were exposed and processed separately gave Madame Yevonde
the freedom to indulge in all manner of different forms
of colour manipulation, and she was arguably the earliest
and most accomplished exponent of this arcane art prior
to the digital age. She experimented tirelessly with
coloured cellophanes over the lights and lens to produce
a variety of different effects - notably in the 'blue'
Goddess images - and further manipulated the colour
by adjusting the balance of the three plates at exposure,
and by raising or lowering the level of a given colour
on printing.
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