Introduction

Nora Hague, McCord Museum, 2003

The human eye sees the world in colour. The early decades of the art of photography present the modern viewer with a bad case of colour blindness. Colour photographic emulsions had not yet been invented, so the 19th century photographic view of the world was in black and white (although it was really more tan and brown, as the albumen paper used at the time was a rich purplish-brown colour).

Motion was also a problem, since the emulsions were still too slow to freeze a moving subject.

Most photographic studios offered a colourist's services to add colour to portraits, much as black-and-white movies are colourized.