VINTAGE BOWENS - VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHY
It’s always an exciting challenge to take a backlist author and give them a new, fresher “look”. We were recently asked to do just this when our series of books by Elizabeth Bowen moved into the Vintage Classics list. Previously we had used black and white photographs, so we wanted to do something different but to keep a period feel suitable for the writing.
Picture Research often presents a chance to consider using different and period photographic processes in current design work, and we thought autochromes would make an attractive series. The autochrome was invented by the Lumière Brothers in 1904 and was the first accessible colour process in photography. These rare and beautiful photographs have a lovely fragile quality and subtlety of colour, and we looked for details rather than a particular narrative moment for each cover.
