Belgian Autochromes From The Early 1900s

Charles Corbet, Marketday at Middelburg, Netherlands, c. 1910 Remi Verstreken, Forest track # 6.3, c. 1913

Autochrome was an early photographic process used to produce colour images, the predecessor to modern colour film photography (which arrived in the mid '30s).

The Autochrome process creates images which are almost closer to paintings than photographs. The unusual colouring lends the pictures a sort of dream-like quality; some look almost like scenes straight from a book of fairy tales.

Charles Corbet, View of Montjoie/Monschau, Germany, c. 1910 Alfonse Van Besten, Stagecoaches at Gent, c. 1912 Remi Verstreken, Mountain hut at Kandersteg, Switzerland, 1909

Florent Van Hoof has curated this wonderful collection containing works from several early Belgian photographers, as well as a lot of information about the process itself.

Just a few of my favourite images are shown here, but do take a look around the whole collection—it's both interesting and beautiful.