page_title: Levi Hill
hierarchical_section_title: Levi Hill
caption_attribution_description: Early color photograph (a Hillotype) by Levi Hill, c. 1850
context_page_description: Levi Hill was an American minister in upstate New York who claimed in 1851 that he had invented a color photographic process. Borrowing terms previously introduced in France, Hill called his process "heliochromy" and the photographs that it produced "heliochromes", but by analogy to the naming of the then-current daguerreotype process after its inventor Louis Daguerre, Hill's color photographs were soon being called "Hillotypes". Hill's work was met with skepticism during his lifetime, then for more than a hundred years after his death histories of photography routinely dismissed it as a complete fraud. Later researchers found that his very difficult process did in fact have a limited ability to reproduce the colors of nature.
context_section_description: Levi Hill (26 February 1816 − 9 February 1865) was an American minister in upstate New York who claimed in 1851 that he had invented a color photographic process. Borrowing terms previously introduced in France, Hill called his process "heliochromy" and the photographs that it produced "heliochromes", but by analogy to the naming of the then-current daguerreotype process after its inventor Louis Daguerre, Hill's color photographs were soon being called "Hillotypes". Hill's work was met with skepticism during his lifetime, then for more than a hundred years after his death histories of photography routinely dismissed it as a complete fraud. Later researchers found that his very difficult process did in fact have a limited ability to reproduce the colors of nature.
caption: Hillotype view of houses, c. 1850
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