Forgotten Colours of the Past

Finlay negatives can be recognised immediately by their edges: a row of green circles in a red-violet strip served to register the photographic negative precisely with the separate colour viewing screen. Jordan’s plates measure 25 × 21 cm and are the largest additive-colour photographs we have so far encountered in historic collections. The holdings at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum have not yet been fully processed. In 2022 Jan Hubička and student Linda Kimrová borrowed an Epson scanner in New York and spent two days working at Hyde Park near Poughkeepsie, not yet knowing how extraordinary a collection they were about to scan.

Major was a German Shepherd, originally a police dog given to Roosevelt by the New York State Police. In 1933 he acquired a distinctly unpresidential reputation at the White House: he bit Senator Hattie Wyatt Caraway and, during a visit by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, nipped him and tore the bottom from his trousers. Major was then sent to Roosevelt’s Hyde Park home and never returned to the White House.

Washington’s first Cherry Blossom Festival ran from 19 to 21 April 1934, ending with the Cherry Blossom Ball at the Mayflower Hotel. The photograph shows Eleanor Roosevelt, her son James and his wife. The coloured registration circles are especially clear along both the upper and lower edges of the plate. Part of the plate was deliberately exposed a second time so that the registration circles would show against an otherwise dark background. The registration marks were particularly important in printing, when the negative and colour screen had to be aligned precisely. It is an unusual trick that we have not yet encountered in the work of other photographers.