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Experimentation with color began as early as the mid-19th century. The first true color photograph was made in 1861 by James Clark Maxwell, a Scottish scientist, who used the additive color theory developed by Thomas Young and Hermann Helmholtz: All colors of light can be mixed optically by combining different proportions of the three primary colors of the spectrum.
Color photography did not become commercially available until the Lumiere brothers’ invention of Autochrome plates in 1904. This single color photograph in the exhibition Shades of Gray is a reminder that the technology continued to progress. And, even as it evolves, the art of the captured image is inherent through its own intrinsic values.