Louis-Amédée built his own darkroom and laboratory at the age of sixteen. By 1844 he was a bassist with the orchestra of the Opéra in Pans and he remained a professional musician for fifty years. In the photography field, he was named as the possible inventor of the autochrome. Several of his uncovered images were evidently taken prior to 1900, years before the Lumières patented their autochrome plate in 1904.
Mante experimented with several photographic and photomechanical processes, resulting in a number of inventions: a process for using false ivory as a photographic support for the negative (1851); one of the first successful attempts at mechanical photoreproduction (1853); refinements of heliographic engraving (1860s, early 1870s), a process for phototypography (reported to the Société Française de la Photographie in 1872); and possibly, production of a trichrome color photograph (1856, thirteen years prior to its official recognition). Much of his photographic work was done in collaboration with Goldschmidt. Several books and articles on Mante are being researched.
It is difficult to attribute the autochromes specifically to Mante or Goldschmidt, although it seems that Goldschmidt's sophistication and self consciousness (he was a bit of a dandy), as well as his travels to Algeria and the south of France, identify certain images as his.