Maxwell, Sutton, and the Birth of Color Photography A Binocular Study [Hardcover]

This focused and incisive study reassesses the historic collaboration between James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Sutton. It reveals that Maxwell and Sutton were closer to true partners than has commonly been assumed, and shows how their experiments illuminate the role of technology, representation, and participation in Maxwell's natural philosophy.1. Introduction: shared media, differing projects and projections 2. Enter Maxwell 3. Photographic illustrations 4. What objectivity? Whose objectivity? Automatic objectivity is social and scientific 5. Photography organized and scientific: from amateurs to professionals 6. Photography as instrument and profession: Art versus science 7. Photographic collaborations: two more cases 8. Maxwell's pictorial and photographic background 9. Methodology of experimental inaction 10. Enter Sutton 11. The place of collaboration and chemistry between men 12. Technologies of projection and color: Different problems and images. Color and truth. 13. A Tale of two experiments: From professional to cognitive autonomy 14. Photographic consequences 15. Conclusion

...this 'Palgrave Pivot' volume offers a fascinating look at a little-known subject... - CHOICE

This book is a fascinating and important contribution to the vast literature on Maxwell, elegantly situating him in the context of Victorian visual cultures. It pursues issues such as the professionalization of photography, its role and status in the 1860s, the types of cooperation between scientists and photographers such as Thomas Sutton, who is also portrayed vividly and in fine historiographic symmetry to Maxwell. It also delves deeply into the modes of visual (re)presentation pursued by these actors, including three-color projection techniques, stereoscopy, and experimental forms of color photography. - Klaus Hentschel, Professor, Department of History, University of Stuttgart, Germany and author of Mapping the Spectrum

This book is critical“&