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Comical associations between the science of photography and ideas about race were common on both sides of the Atlantic in the decades after the medium's invention. Some humorists observed that no bourgeois sitter would welcome the sight of his "negative" or blackened self; others illustrated the cosmetic character of race by depicting the effects of photographic chemicals on human skin. This essay takes these racial jokes seriously by reading them as historically specific social commentary. Beginning with an analysis of the first book of photographic humor, Cuthbert Bede's Photographic Pleasures (I 855), it shows how this genre both reinforced and challenged popular conceptions of whiteness, blackness, and the photographic medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The science of photoreproduction has undergone revolutionary developments during the past few years. Although photography was invented in the early nineteenth century, it has been only in the last few years that one could snap a picture and obtain a finished photograph in less than a minute. The development of simple office-copying techniques for the reproduction of letters and other documents is of very recent origin. Perhaps less well known but certainly of equal importance are the new photographic techniques for obtaining a matrix for printing, that is, a printing plate obtained by photographic means. It is the purpose of the present article to acquaint the reader with the scientific basis of photoreproduction techniques. Since historically, and perhaps economically, photomechanical techniques are of greatest importance, we shall consider them first. At the same time, it might be wise to review the essentials of printing techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]