In glorious technicolour

A new supersized volume looks at the wonderful world of the colour photochrom, circa 1900. Amy Davies spoke to one of the book's authors to find out more

- Amy Davies

At the turn of the 20th century, photography had been around for a fair while. But, if you can imagine only ever seeing the landscapes and vista of a country in black & white, it must have been quite the revelation when colour imagery was pioneered.

Suddenly, a dazzling array of blues, greens, and indeed all the colours of the rainbow, gave a much more vivid and realistic view on what a place really looked like. If you were in the business of selling holidays and tours, that must have been quite the improvement on the pictures of old.

A quote which sums this up perfectly comes from George Robert Sims, writing in London in colour photography, published by The Photochrom Co. Ltd, in around 1900. He said, 'For he who knows not the colour of London knows not the living London of today, but only the ghost of a London that is dead.'

Of course, it would be a while before genuine colour photography was available to the masses. But, the photochrome gave a jolly good approximation of how a scene looked. And if you've not seen them before, a huge new book celebrating more than 100 scenes of the British Isles has just been published by Taschen.

When I say huge, I really do mean it. The book weighs 6.43kg (that's approximately the same as my dachshund, if you were wondering), and measures a whopping 29x39.5cm. In short, you're going to need a pretty large bookcase to accommodate this - and you should make sure your coffee table can bear the weight, too.

But, those enormous pages really do show off the dazzling contents within at their very best. At 608 pages, this isn't a book you're likely to finish in one sitting, but it's something to be savoured, rather than devoured.