These photographs are from 1913, one year before the start of World War I. And yet, they have an extremely modern feel and a dreamlike quality that wouldn't seem out of place in an Instagram feed.They were taken using a process known as Autochrome , which debuted in 1907. It was invented by the Lumière brothers and was the earliest widely available color photography technique before film caught up in the 1930s.The photographer is Mervyn O'Gorman, a famed British engineer. The girl is believed to be his daughter Christina, captured on a day at the beach in Lulworth Cove, southern England.Images of Christina are displayed in the exhibition Drawn By Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum, Bradford, until 21 June.

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Mysterious girl? – Even though it's fair to assume that Christina is the photographer's daughter, some uncertainty remains. "We do not know who Christina is," Colin Harding, Curator of Photographs and Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum, said.



"There is no record of Lt Mervyn O'Gorman and his wife, Florence, having any children as far as I have been able to find. There is a census record of a woman named Christina O'Gorman living in Dublin, who was born in the 1890s.

"This would make her about the same age as the model in these photos, and we do know Mervyn O'Gorman had family links in Ireland. It is possible it may be the same person and she's a relative, but we can't say for sure."