Dreamlike color photos capture English beaches at the turn of the century

Otto Pfenninger's color photos

A day at the beach with one of the first color cameras

Alex Q. Arbuckle

1906

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Born in Switzerland in 1855, Otto Pfenninger moved to England in the 1880s, where he became a pioneer in the emerging field of color photography.In 1905, he designed and built a unique camera which used three color-separated plates to capture a full-color image in a single exposure.The following summer, he tested his new contraption on the sunny beaches and parks of Brighton, rendering leisurely and candid scenes in vivid (if somewhat warped) color.

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