This past spring, the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, announced that it had acquired two rare color photographs from 1908. They were donated by a 96-year-old woman living in Rochester, and the museum assumed that they had been taken by her mother, Charlotte Spaulding, a member of the Photo-Secession movement who gave up practicing her art after she married into the family that helped found the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo. But it soon became apparent that the images were not by Spaulding, but of her, and had been taken by none other than Edward Steichen, one of the key figures of modernist photography in America and an artist whose reputation and market value have recently surged.

Not only that, but by coincidence the gift came during the same year that marks the centenary of Autochrome, the pioneering color process by which these pictures were made, introduced in France in 1907 by the Lumière Brothers. During this year and into 2008, several museums around the world, including the Eastman House and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, are celebrating this rather unique medium with special exhibitions.

Looking at an Autochrome for the first time is a revelation, in more ways than one. First off, we’re not accustomed to seeing any images from the turn of the century in color, and a well-made and well-preserved Autochrome inspires most people to say, or at least think, "But I thought the world was all black and white back then!" It is a strange and exciting sensation to see scenes and people from a century ago in full, vibrant color.

Second, Autochromes are transparencies on glass, so they need to be illuminated from behind to be seen. Eastman House director Anthony Bannon, who acquired the two Steichens, says, "Sure, it’s difficult to see, but that makes it all the more magical when you hold it up to a light source. In your hand, it’s dark; then, when it intercepts light, this little jewel-like creature comes to life."

Most photography enthusiasts have only seen Autochromes in books, but such reproductions do scant justice to the luminescent richness and shimmering quality of the objects themselves. The colors of Autochrome are often described as "muted," and even if intended as a compliment, the remark is inaccurate. The colors only look muted on paper, or if they have faded due to improper conservation.

Even if you go to an Autochrome exhibition, you’re probably not seeing the real thing. Conservators are loath to let too much light pass through the plates, because that can degrade them over time, so they substitute specially made glass replicas, according to Alison Nordström, curator of photographs at Eastman House.

One of the few exhibitions to present real, original Autochromes was held recently at the gallery of Hans P. Kraus Jr., the New York photography dealer who specializes in 19th- and early 20th-century works. Kraus even presented some of the pictures in Diascopes, period viewing devices consisting of a folding leather case with a mirror inside to reflect light into the plate and the image back to the eye. Visitors could truly experience the pictures as they were when they were created 75 to 100 years ago.

Autochrome has the distinction of being the first commercially viable color process in the history of photography. In 1839, when photography was invented, the lack of color was a distinct disappointment to most people, despite the later artistic prejudice in favor of monochrome. Immediately, inventive minds began to try to solve the problem, with little real success; the most popular alternative being the delicate hand-coloring of black and white pictures after the fact. In 1903, the clever Lumières, Louis and Auguste, already famous for their invention of motion pictures, came up with a genuine and fairly easy-to-use color process, which they perfected over the next four years before offering it to the public at a fanfare-filled event in Paris.