For the first time, in 1908, the high-quality photographic art journal Camera Work dedicated its pages to colour photography. It was not the only journal to do so. The Studio, a British art photography journal, also published a special summer issue celebrating colour photography. These two issues showcased the autochrome, a colour process that relied on dyed grains of potato starch for its vivid colour. Within a year of its marketing, artistic photographers such as Heinrich Kühn (1866–1944), Baron de Meyer (1868–1946), and Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966) were making their own autochromes, which were then reproduced in these volumes via a four-colour halftone process. The autochrome, however, was not the first colour method to be reproduced, nor was it the first to have commercial application. Among the many different solutions for colour photography, Gabriel Lippmann's interferential colour process had already emerged triumphantly, as it dazzled the eye and caught the imagination of scientists and viewers alike. It was introduced into the market as a viable process and yet its success, if one can even call it that, was short-lived.

Only referencing Lippmann's interferential photography in passing, both Camera Work and The Studio introduced the nascent history of colour photography by explaining the myriad attempts to reproduce colour. Writing for Camera Work, Edward Steichen declared, “[…] we must not forget Professor Lippmann, who gave us what is undoubtedly the most wonderful process of color photography” (Steichen 1908, 14).