Down The Sepia Path

 

This is an old sepia photograph, taken from one of the many old album pages that litter my room. Many people believe that the sepia colour that characterises photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the result of fading over time. This isn’t actually the case; sepia toning was specifically introduced to combat the fading that was common in old photographs exposed to light. It later became a fashion statement in its own right, and most Victorian subjects - including this lady - would have preferred the sepia look to black and white.