FEAST YOUR eyes on two remarkable photographs by Edward Steichen, taken about a century ago, which have only recently come to light. Relics of the earliest days of colour photography, they are lushly tinted portraits of a raven-haired woman, thought to be Charlotte Spaulding, a friend and student. They are at once inviting and forbidding, staged yet intimate. In their gauzy splendour, one can’t help but think of Gustav Klimt’s jewel-like portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer (one of which sold for a king’s ransom last summer). After decades in the cupboard of Spaulding’s daughter (which helped preserve these rare, colour autochromes), they will be on view this autumn at the George Eastman House in Rochester, a top photography museum.
