New Invention of Color Print.
John Lewisohn, engineer, chemist, business man, and artist, has been exhibiting a series of color prints from photographic negatives at the Municipal Galleries in the Washington Irving Building, of New York. Mr. Lewisohn has an office at 88 Fifth Avenue, but it was in the Municipal Galleries that he gave out an account of his work in this field.
“I don’t call myself an artist,” he began, with a deprecating smile. He did not need to. There were the pictures. The subjects ran all the way from the brown derby hat of commerce to the red, red rose of the poets. And the unique feature of the work was the paper—plain everyday blue-print paper, despised by many amateurs and beloved to the housewife who can make prints of her baby out the kitchen window while she is ironing and wash them in the sink—and that’s all. That isn’t quite all of Mr. Lewisohn’s process, but it begins that way. It proceeds by a series of color washes. The process is patented, but there is nothing complicated about it. Simply reverse the laundry method—instead of washing color off, wash it on.
“This isn’t real color photography,” admitted Mr. Lewisohn frankly. “That has not come yet. Some people say it never will.”
Most of the color photographs taken so far end in the glass negative, and even that has its weak points. The ideal is a negative that will give a print in the actual colors of nature. In most of the so-called photographic color prints there is more or less failure in the blending of tones. There are no such crude greens or muddy pinks in these prints. The delicate shadings of flower petals are perfectly rendered. A gas flame burns up so brightly one could almost read by it.
“I took a picture of the eclipse of the sun once,” remarked Mr. Lewisohn. He turns his camera on everything in earth or sky—a box of matches, a bronze statuette, sunset clouds.
“Every man ought to have a hobby,” he said. “This is mine—just now. Some time I’ll change it. I studied engineering over in Europe. Electricity is wonderfully interesting.”
When he was asked if the ordinary snapshot artist could hope to use his process, Mr. Lewisohn said that undoubtedly he could. No commercial use has been made of it, but that will come in time. The work so far has been carried forward because it interested the inventor. He has been experimenting for years, and his process has been commented on favorably by European authorities. He has written something about it for the 1915 “American Annual of Photography.”