The Mall

A Dufaycolor colour transparency of The Mall in London, taken by an unknown photographer in 1945. The Mall is decorated with the flags of the Allied Powers, part of the celebrations to mark VE (Victory in Europe) Day and the end of World War Two in Europe.

Dufaycolor first appeared in 1932 as a 16mm cine film, followed in 1935 by a roll film version. It employed a geometric screen made up of red lines alternating with rows of green and blue rectangles. Colour reproduction was good, and it was comparatively fast—although only one-third of the speed of contemporaneous black-and-white film.

Dufaycolor was aimed at the everyday ‘snapshot’ market. A processing service which returned finished transparencies, mounted and ready for viewing, opened up colour photography to a whole new class of photographers. Dufaycolor, the last of the screen processes, remained on the market up to the 1950s.