Franz Rontag, an amateur photographer, was born on September 3rd, 1897, when rapid technological development was changing the world. He was born in Vienna, the then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and was most likely exposed to all the wonders this era called “Jahrhundertwende” was to produce, such as the invention of colour photography.

He received 3 years technical training as an apprentice in Vienna’s First Engineering Works and worked as a metalworker in the K&K (imperial) Artillery Factory, from where he was drafted to serve in World War One as late as 1918. He participated in the Carynthian national resistance fight of 1919 and was awarded a medal for bravery.

Franz Rontag held various jobs as a machine fitter in the metal manufacturing industry and became production manager for a firm producing surgical instruments.

His first photographs, dating from the mid twenties, were black and white shots of Dutch subjects indicating that he had a job in Holland for several years.

Franz Rontag’s photographic achievements were first recognised in 1930 when he was awarded a diploma of recognition and praise for artistic excellence in the first “JUSTO-PHOT Competition”.

Recognition continued and he started his position as a lecturer at “URANIA”, the People’s University of Vienna, in 1931. He taught advanced amateur photography classes, the techniques and practices of photography and eventually the technique of Bromoil transfer and Uvachrome. Franz Rontag continued teaching modern black and white photography until 1937 and resumed again after World War Two.

The 3rd International Photographic Exhibition in Vienna, held in 1934, paid testament to his “extraordinary achievements” and put him alongside photographers such as Franz Katolicky and Rudolf Koppitz.

Besides a small number of black and white photographs which Rontag exhibited, he mainly caught the attention of judges with his 3 or 4 colour Bromoil transfers and stereo transparencies.

In spring 1936 Franz Rontag lectured on the “fascination of colour photography“. A series of letters establishes the fact that he was invited to have his colour Bromoil transfers and transparencies exhibited in London and Cambridge. After having seen these, M.W. Zürcher (Honorary Technical Advisor to the Cambridge University Camera Club) suggested that he should have his “obviously new process”, which avoids grain, patented.

It seems to be the invention of the Uvachrome process and the general economic and political situation before the Second World War which kept Franz Rontag from producing more Bromoil transfers, although he did occasionally re-ink and transfer old shots as late as 1973.

From 1937 to 1942 he worked as an engineer and instructor with C.P. Görtz, the famous optical instruments firm, where his hobby and work seemed to coincide. He married Marie Mössler in 1939.

He was drafted to serve at the Russian front in 1942 where he was taken prisoner at the end of the war, but was able to escape from a Russian transport of prisoners of war and returned to Vienna as early as May 1945.

He eventually became head of the department of Industry in the Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce. His main project was the organisation and training of apprentices, which he promoted all over Europe. This activity took him to many international conventions and as far as the United States (1955) and Russia (1960).

This important function seems to have been responsible for a certain discontinuity in his photographic ambitions. There are only a few photographs which betray him as a passionate amateur photographer; most pictures are memorabilia of his family and documentation of his trips abroad.

Franz Rontag made an effort to produce coloured Bromoils not because he wanted to achieve a special artistic effect as many of the artists or "picturalists" seemed to be trying to at the early part of the 20th century and still profess to do so today, but rather for the simple reason of rendering beautiful coloured images of the best possible photographic quality and authenticity to reality.

He did not want to alter the expression of the picture taken but to achieve a perfect imitation of reality for want of any other feasible process of producing coloured pictures. Of course, he specialised on looking at colourful objects such as flowers, fruits, landscapes and a few human portraits through the lense of his camera. Having to produce identical pictures with the relevant filters in order to gain a naturally coloured image of reality, meant he had to concentrate on still lives.

As soon as the Ilford Colour negative film was developed Rontag stopped producing coloured images.

Franz Rontag died in Vienna in 1980.

The following technical information on producing colour Bromoils was written by Franz Rontag to be used on an English invitation card to an exhibition in 1937:

These color prints have been produced with the help of the three color photography.

The basis are 3 negatives filtered with blue, green and red filters on an Ilford set of three filters on an Ilford Hypersensitive Panchromatic Film. These three negatives are enlarged on Bromide silver paper, superimposed and well matched, cut and marked to fit. Then the silver bromide negatives undergo a process of tanning - the pictures disappear and instead of the blackening a graded gelatin relief develops. The matrixes are being colored according to the principles of oil printing with rather hard oil paint and printed on a hand-press on paper that does not contain wood fiber. The matrix of the blue filter-take is colored yellow, the green filter-take red and the red filtered one blue. Printing these matrix several times one above the other produces a colored print which resembles the original.

To find out more about Franz Rontag click here to visit a web site produced by his family (please note most of the site is written in German).