Lecture: "The Autochrome Plates of Batty Fischer"

On Wednesday, 7 May 2025, the Luxembourg City Photothèque is hosting a lecture, in French, on the autochrome process: the technique favoured by renowned Luxembourg photographer Batty Fischer to capture the nuanced colours of his real-world subjects. The lecture will be given by Françoise Ploye and relates to the ongoing work to restore a collection of 300 of Batty Fischer's autochromes. It will delve into the technical details of the autochrome and explain the issues involved in preserving these historical photos.  

Invented in 1903, and produced commercially between 1907 and 1934 by the Lumière brothers, the famous "autochrome" plate is a transparent, positive photograph in which the colours are restored by a very fine mosaic of dyed grains of potato starch, using the three-colour process. More than 60 years after the invention of photography, this was finally the first commercially successful process for colour photography, accessible to a broad audience of professional and amateur photographers alike. Like its monochrome predecessor, the daguerreotype, the autochrome is a direct positive photograph. This makes each picture a one-of-a-kind and very special creation, resulting directly from the action of light within the photographic chamber. The dyed grains of potato starch lend autochrome pictures an unparalleled aesthetic quality thanks to the stippled (pointillist) effect, which is particularly appreciated by pictorialism enthusiasts and nature-lovers.

The Photothèque's stunning collection testifies to the skill of Batty Fischer, an outstanding autochromist, who was part of the vanguard of colour-loving artistic photographers of the early 20th century. Other renowned photographers to have embraced autochrome include Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Jacques Henri Lartigue and Heinrich Kühn.

Françoise Ploye is a graduate of the Institut national du Patrimoine (INP – National Heritage Institute) in Paris, and a professional photographic heritage restorer. From 2002 to 2008, she was responsible for organising and implementing numerous preventive conservation and restoration projects at the Paris Photo Restoration and Conservation Workshop (Atelier de restauration et de conservation des photographies). Since 2008, she has been running her own business, offering a full service in the preservation, dissemination and authentication of heritage photography collections. In addition to publishing articles and giving talks about her work, she has been lecturing in preventive conservation and the restoration of photographs at INP since 2002. 

Practical information 

• Date: Wednesday, 7 May 2025 
• Time: From 18:00 to 20:00 
• Address: Cercle Cité (3, rue Genistre) 
• Registration required (phototheque@vdl.lu / Tel.: 4796-4700) 

Luxembourg City Photothèque 

The Luxembourg City Photothèque, established in 1984, is a photographic archive tasked with collating Luxembourg City's photographic heritage, preserving it for future generations and making it available to the public. Today, the Photothèque's collections encompass some 7 million photographs, dating from the 1860s onwards: they have been amassed over the years through donations, bequests, acquisitions of collections, and assignments commissioned by the City. The Photothèque continues to add to its existing collections and document the development of Luxembourg City.