autochrome

In the late 1890’s following the death of her Father, Olive Edis opened up a photography studio in Sheringham with her sister Katherine and employed a local printer Lilian Page, a partnership that lasted her entire career. Autochromes are a method of producing coloured images and involved exposing the image through a filter of differently coloured potato starch grains, this took longer than ordinary black and white photography and wasn’t suitable for moving images. In 1913 she received a medal for her work on autochromes from the Royal Photographic Society and a year later she invented and patented her ‘diascape’ a device to view autochrome images. Edis’ skill and subtle touch began to be noticed and her images were regularly published in the ‘Illustrated London News’, as her reputation grew so did the list of famous names wanting to be recorded through her lens. Famous sitters included David Lloyd George, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Edward VIII, and Nancy Astor the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons.Although she photographed illustrious subjects it is her passion for recording the faces of ordinary men and women, especially the fishermen of Sheringham that carry the greatest impact, for without her work these faces would be lost to time.In 1918 she was employed by the Imperial War museum to photograph the battlefields of France and the Flanders region in Belgium. This autochrome self portrait was taken in Edis' studio in Sheringham, the basket of flowers is believed to be there to hide the shutter mechanism. Although Edis set up her pictures in a quite traditional manner her penchant to only use natural light set her apart from others.