Maxwell, Sutton, and the Birth of Color Photography: A Binocular Study

by J. Cat

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137338303
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	07/24/2013
Series:	Palgrave Pivot
Edition description:	2013
Pages:	165
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jordi Cat is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, USA. He is the co-author of Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics (1996), and the author of the forthcoming monographs Master and Designer of Fields: James Clerk Maxwell and Constructive, Connective, Conventionalist, and Concrete Natural Philosophy and Physics Beyond Laws and Theories: The Limits of Unity, Universality, and Precision.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

"...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 critically important for the history of science, the history of photography and to our knowledge of nineteenth century visual culture. Beautifully written, it sheds a completely new light on the invention of colour photography and in an account that is both intelligent and readable. The story of the collaboration of physicist James Clerk Maxwell and photographer Thomas Sutton is, in Jordi Cat's hands, an important contribution to our understanding of the Victorian science and the evidential value scientific photography." - Marta Braun, author of Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne Jules Marey 1830-1904 and Eadweard Muybridge

From the Publisher