Digital photography to the aid of lost colours

The results of the work conducted in 1994 by Rudolf Gschwind of Imaging and Media Lab of the University of Basle, showed day by day that the work had an enormous relevance….The colours of our photographs were disappearing irrevocably.

Thanks to digitisation in three distinct images, one for yellow, one for magenta and the other for cyan, this programme measured the density curves of these colours and, through digital processing, calculated the curves of the original colours and reconstituted them.

These slides, produced by Ella Maillart in 1937-1938 on Kodachrome film during her travels in Asia, were conserved at the Elysée Museum. These pictures were entrusted by Charles-Henri Favrod to Rudolf Gschwind, who reconstituted their colours.