For those of us who work with historical photographic processes, there is something deeply fascinating about the pioneers who laid the foundations of our craft. Few names carry as much weight as Auguste and Louis Lumière. Best known as pioneers of cinema and inventors of the Autochrome process, their influence on photography and moving images continues to be felt more than a century later.

While many photographers have studied the Lumière brothers’ achievements, very few have attempted to understand their inventions by recreating them from the ground up. François Thibault is one of those rare individuals. A visual arts and film teacher with a lifelong passion for photographic history, he has spent years researching and constructing a faithful working replica of the Lumière Cinématographe using traditional methods and workshop techniques.

In this interview, François shares the story behind his remarkable reconstruction, the challenges of recreating nineteenth-century engineering, his fascination with Autochromes, and his thoughts on why historical photographic and cinematographic processes continue to inspire artists and makers today.

Introduction and Context

1. Could you introduce yourself and tell us how you first became interested in the history of photography and the beginnings of cinema?

My name is François Thibault. I am 34 years old, and I teach visual arts and film. I have a background in art history and education.

I was fortunate to have a photographer father who took me into the darkroom when I was four or five years old. At the time, I thought my father was a magician, so naturally I wanted to become a magician too. I wanted to understand optics, cameras, and what was happening inside all these objects.

At six years old, I took a shoebox, the lens from a slide projector, and a flashlight to build my first projector, using strips of tracing paper.

2. What was the precise moment when you became fascinated by the work of the Lumière brothers?

I’ve always been drawn to pioneers. The pivotal moments when things shift and change forever. That’s what Lumière is all about.

As Thierry Frémaux says, “There were many inventors before Lumière, not after.”

Even as a child, I saw pictures of the camera in books and wanted to understand how it worked. I was fascinated from a very young age by this device that makes death less absolute.

3. Many people know the Lumière brothers as pioneers of cinema, but few are aware of their contribution to photography. What attracts you most to their work?

It’s true that cinema was only a small part of their work. I don’t know whether the quote is accurate, but Louis Lumière supposedly said that of all his inventions, this one cost him the least.

They were originally major industrialists in the field of photographic plates, with only one global competitor, a certain George Eastman. Hundreds of workers and a worldwide distribution network undoubtedly contributed to the success of the Cinématographe.

I also like the fact that they have hundreds of patents bearing their name. Tulle gras, the loudspeaker, the salad spinner… they were interested in everything.

But for me, the most beautiful invention is, without a doubt, the Cinématographe.

Historical Construction Equipment

4. Your recent publications feature an impressive reconstruction of a Cinématographe from the Lumière era. What inspired you to undertake such an ambitious project?

More than ten years ago, when I was still a student, I went to see a friend of my father’s, Pierre-Marc Delignières, who owned a small general mechanics business.

At the time, I had drawn up plans based solely on the dimensions I knew, namely the size of the camera body. I therefore created the plans for the parts to scale. Pierre-Marc welcomed me and taught me how to use the machines.

This prototype still exists. It’s functional, but the overall balance isn’t effective. There’s vibration during filming and, consequently, during projection as well.

Almost three years ago, I had the good fortune to meet William Brossard, who had also built a replica. We were supposed to spend a few hours together working on our equipment, but we ended up talking all day. He must have seen the passion in my eyes because he helped me obtain some essential dimensions for the most complex parts, allowing me to begin building a new replica.

Unfortunately, I never had access to an original Cinématographe. I was only able to study William Brossard’s replica.

Nevertheless, I created a collection of every image of the device that I could find so I could draw the parts as closely as possible to the original.

5. To what extent was the design based on original documents, patents, or surviving examples?

Period patents provide very little information. They show the general principles, but not the details, and especially not the dimensions. So I spent almost a year with my ruler, set square, and compass, drawing all the parts from the plan of the mounting plate.

Today, I have a binder containing almost a hundred drawings, plans, written accounts of my project, invoices for materials, letters and e-mails exchanged with William, and the plans for my first prototype. It’s one of my most prized possessions.

6. What were the main technical challenges encountered during the construction process?

I started with the woodworking. First, you have to find the wood. That’s quite complex, both in finding it and in selecting the right logs. I started with planks in their raw state, but they had been drying for forty years.

The case took a long time because all the dovetail joints used to assemble it were made by hand. The tripod was certainly the easiest part to make, even though I almost lost a finger on the router bit.

The projection stand is an interpretation because I had no dimensions and no idea how the pieces were originally assembled. So I relied on the assembly techniques used in late nineteenth-century furniture.

As for the mechanical parts, every piece was a challenge. Some required a great deal of patience.

Machining a part is a mental exercise. You have the blueprint on one side and the raw piece of metal on the other. Like a sculptor, you use the lathe or milling machine to bring the part out of the metal.

7. Were there any elements of the mechanism that surprised you with their ingenuity once you saw them in action?

I’m still amazed by how small the parts are. I’ve made components that were no more than 20 mm long and 3 mm thick, sometimes even 1.25 mm. That was the challenge because you’re pushing the material to its absolute limit.

It’s a delicate balance between the strength of the material and the machine used to create the part.

The element I find most beautiful on this machine is the flap disc that allows the jaws to be inserted and removed. It’s attached to the eccentric cam, so it needs to be hollowed out to act as a counterweight.

The steel strips are held in place by small 2 mm shims. It’s an extremely complex part, but magnificent to watch in action.

8. What did you learn about the Lumière brothers as engineers by recreating their equipment?

One can only marvel at both the simplicity of the camera’s design and its extreme complexity.

Everything is already there. Those who succeeded the Lumière brothers simply added a sprocket to reduce the film’s resistance to the claws.

I like to think that Louis Lumière conceived the mechanism while watching his wife at her sewing machine. It’s exactly the same principle: the intermittent advancement of the fabric, with the needle replaced by the light that exposes the film.

In any case, it is the work of a mind that knew how to synthesize ideas, the mark of a visionary and brilliant thinker.

While building it, I often thought of Jules Carpentier, who mass-produced the camera, but especially of all the anonymous workers in his factory, people to whom I would like to give a name and a face.

Those workers spent countless hours with a file in their hands because, yes, machines shape the parts, but the file is what finishes the job. I can’t even count the number of hours I spent filing.

So I would like to pay tribute to all those workers who had gold in their hands.

9. To what extent is your reconstruction faithful to the original machine in terms of materials, mechanics, and operation?

There are only three differences.

The first is the lens. I adapted a lens from the 1950s. I didn’t have much choice, but I mounted it in a lens holder equivalent to the original.

The second concerns the gears. Originally, they had an 18-degree angle, which I haven’t yet been able to reproduce. However, I haven’t given up hope of achieving it one day. I simply need to acquire a little more equipment for my workshop.

The third difference involves the springs against the claws. Originally, they were held by two screws, but I used only one because, given a width of 4 mm, fitting two screws one above the other is quite a feat.

Aside from those three details, the materials, whether wood or metal, are faithfully reproduced. The operation is exactly the same as the original, right down to the sound, which I was able to compare with archival videos.

Reviving Early Cinema

10. What does it feel like to see a machine from the early days of cinema come back to life and work again?

I can’t describe the emotion I felt when, after three months of machining, the mechanism finally started up. I must confess, I almost had tears in my eyes.

You would have to ask my partner, who followed the whole project with infinite patience, because I went straight to her, mechanism in hand, jumping for joy.

It was also the moment when I realized that I would be able to film and project with something I had made entirely with my own hands.

I have a dream: to travel the world with my camera under my arm and film our modern world in the very places where the Lumière brothers first set up a camera. Not to compare, but to bear witness to humanity’s constantly changing and evolving nature.

11. Have you filmed any sequences with your reconstruction, and if so, how did the experience go?

It shouldn’t be long now. It should be possible within the coming weeks.

The film advances admirably, and you can already see the remarkable stability of the film in the gate. I still need to make the small receiving box that collects the film inside the camera, but I am searching for the dimensions of its components so I can make it as close as possible to the original.

If I can’t find them quickly, I will make an opaque bag into which the film can fall freely while remaining protected from light. According to an engraving I found, this was a system that was used at the time.

12. Do you think modern photographers and filmmakers can learn valuable lessons from these old technologies?

Filmmakers love their history. Proof of this is that I am going to Italy with my camera to shoot a sequence for the first feature film of a young English director.

The history of cinema is fascinating because it combines our emotions, what we see on screen, and our creative spirit.

All of this has been made possible by the minds that created the devices allowing the world to dream of something else for two hours inside a theater.

Autochromes and Color Photography

13. The Lumière brothers also revolutionized color photography with the Autochrome process. How did your interest in Autochromes begin?

Being passionate about Lumière, I naturally became interested in Autochromes.

Imagine creating color photographs on glass plates using potato starch.

In fact, the first presentation of the Cinématographe took place at the end of a lecture the two brothers gave about their work and experiments that ultimately led to the creation of Autochromes.

It was their primary focus, and it remained the only commercially viable color process until the arrival of Kodachrome nearly thirty years later.

I also love Autochromes because everything about them is natural. They are made from elements that nature has given us, combined in a way that reproduces natural colors through one of the simplest methods ever invented for reproducing our image.

14. What fascinates you most about Autochromes compared to other historical photographic processes?

I am fascinated by the photographs of Albert Kahn, the philanthropic banker who sent photographers all over the world to document peoples and customs that were inevitably going to disappear beneath the steamroller of the modern world.

Thanks to him, we possess a treasure, a record of a lost world preserved in its natural colors, and that is priceless.

15. Have you ever tried creating or reproducing Autochromes yourself?

Oh yes, and it was a disaster!

I tried to lay a screen of colored starch onto a plate, but the process was simply too complex to manage in a kitchen!

16. In your opinion, why do Autochromes continue to fascinate photographers more than a century after their invention?

It’s like Technicolor. It’s a technique, a grain, a rendering that cannot truly be imitated.

With Technicolor, nothing can really be done anymore, but with your work, you’ve given photographers renewed hope of reproducing the world in color, and above all on the material they love most: the glass plate.

It’s as if we could sit down and converse with one of our prehistoric ancestors about the pigments they used on cave walls hundreds of thousands of years ago.

17. How do you perceive the link between the Lumière brothers’ work in color photography and their achievements in cinema?

The precision of the framing and the depth of field.

Whether in the films made with the Cinématographe or in photographs taken on Autochrome plates, the framing is always perfect. It is the mark of a discerning eye and a masterful sense of composition.

Autochromes also have the unique characteristic of offering enormous depth of field. Everything appears sharp, from the foreground to infinity. The same is true of the Cinématographe, thanks to its lens.

Historical Processes Today

18. In your opinion, why are we seeing a renewed interest in historical photographic and cinematographic processes today?

The need to feel things.

Materials in our hands have a soul. It reflects a desire to reconnect with the physical world.

The two worlds are not incompatible. On the contrary, in preservation work, dematerialization often helps protect physical objects.

But I believe many people today feel a need to touch, experience, and engage directly with things. Our senses rarely deceive us.

19. What role do reconstruction projects play in the preservation of photographic and cinematographic heritage?

Today, a museum or private collector would never risk taking an original camera into the street to film.

The value and rarity of these devices have, in a way, made them prisoners of their display cases, which is perfectly understandable.

With replicas, however, we can use equipment exactly as it was used in its own time without risking damage or worse.

That is why I am a strong supporter of replicas. The pleasure of working with this kind of equipment opens possibilities that would otherwise remain inaccessible.

20. Do you plan to pursue any future projects related to Lumière?

Absolutely.

I still have some accessories to create before my replica is truly complete, but most of my work now lies elsewhere.

I am currently working on a replica of the second prototype used to film the very first motion pictures, the machine that served as the basis for the mass-produced device I have just recreated.

This prototype is preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. I am trying to draw up plans from the available information. So far it is working, but if someone could open the display case so I could take a few measurements, that would be wonderful.

I am also considering reproducing the projector created by Carpentier.

In short, any device related to the Lumière Cinématographe interests me.

Closing Remarks

21. If Auguste and Louis Lumière could see your reconstruction today, what do you think would surprise them most?

The fact that 130 years later we are still using lathes, milling machines, and files to make things.

At a time when we can send probes to the far reaches of space, it was a deliberate choice on my part to preserve traditional techniques rather than rely on laser cutting or CNC machines.

I hope they would be pleased to see a young man, the same age they were when they created it, following in their footsteps.

Otherwise, they might sue me for patent infringement!

22. Is there a particular historical process, camera, or invention that you dream of recreating in the future?

There are so many devices that fascinate me that the list would be far too long.

Some cameras revived the Lumière mechanism, such as the Pathé Professionnelle. It greatly intrigues me and makes me want to recreate it.

I think the Lumière Cinématographe will remain my life’s passion.

I fully intend to film and project with it as soon as possible. One day, at the end of my life, I hope to look back on a collection of films that reflect my life and my contribution to this world.

23. Where can readers follow your work and future projects?

I created an Instagram page, @cinematographelumiere222, where people can follow the construction of the device and, soon, its operation.

I regularly share updates on my progress and discuss the project with people from all over the world.

I can’t wait to publish the first images filmed with the device.

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Conclusion

François Thibault’s work demonstrates that historical processes are far more than museum pieces. By rebuilding and operating a working Lumière Cinématographe, he has gained a unique understanding of the ingenuity, craftsmanship, and vision that helped shape the early history of photography and cinema.

His project reminds us that the best way to understand historical technology is often to engage with it directly. Through careful research, traditional craftsmanship, and a genuine passion for preservation, François has brought one of the most important machines in photographic history back to life.

We would like to thank François for taking the time to share his experiences and insights with our readers. If you would like to follow his ongoing work, future reconstructions, and upcoming films made with the replica, you can find him on Instagram at @cinematographelumiere222.