England in Color
The King's Country, caught in Autochrome
Amanda Uren
1928
In the late 1920s and early 1930s National Geographic sent photographer Clifton R. Adams to England to record its farms, towns and cities, and its people at work and play. Only, Adams happened to record it all in color using the Autochrome process.
The Autochrome was the foremost color photographic process of the day, since it was first brought to market by the Lumière brothers in 1907. The core ingredient? Potatoes. Tiny grains of dyed potato starch, around 4,000,000 per square inch, coated a glass plate. The gaps between the grains filled with lampblack, and the coated layer allowed the exposure to capture a color image.In 1928 England, farming was a very significant part of life, with men and women employed in the fields. In fact, many of Adams' autochromes show women. That year British women attained full voting equality with men, via the Equal Franchise Act. Until the passage of the act, only women over 30 could vote in British elections.Clifton R. Adams was 38 years old when he took these pictures. He photographed many other European countries, as well as Central and North America, working for National Geographic from 1920 until his death in 1934, aged just 44.
