People occassionally ask to see how the original image compares to the cleaned-up enhancement, so I thought I would zoom in and show the speckly visual noise of the original which I removed. It also demonstrates how much the blue dyes had faded. I really had to push the saturation levels there.

I think this is a most remarkable window into the past, connecting us so immediately to the ghosts of those who went before us. It was taken 110 years ago, on Monday 19th January 1914. French photographer Auguste Léon photographed this little girl in the village of Aswan in Egypt, where he was recording the local culture for the Albert Kahn planetary archive. I have cleaned & enhanced the detail of this autochrome for you, but the colour is original (it has not been colourised).

Amazingly, this early Edwardian colour photograph was taken 122 years ago! The lady in white was photographed in 1902 by the German scientist Adolf Miethe, who not only co-invented the first practical photographic flash but also made huge advances in early colour photography. This shot pre-dates the invention of autochromes by several years and instead employed a series of 3 [red/green/blue] coloured filters inside the camera. It has not been colourised.