Colorsnap! Colour Photography, the Market in Patents and the 1929 Crash


Henning, Michelle ORCID: 0000-0003-3798-7227 (2020) Colorsnap! Colour Photography, the Market in Patents and the 1929 Crash. History of Photography, 44 (4). pp. 267-286.

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Abstract

Although very short-lived, the Colorsnap process, promoted in 1928-29 by the small British company Colour Snapshots (1928) Ltd., is mentioned in several histories of colour photography processes as a key example of a false start in colour photography. Such accounts emphasise problems with technical quality and poor industrial organisation, but miss the key role of the market in patents and changes in investment practices in the period. From 1926 - 1929, the London Stock Exchange saw a frenzy of speculative investment in companies touting new innovations in media, linked to gramophone, radio, cinema, photography, and photo-telegraphy. Like most of these companies, Colour Snapshots Ltd. was inexperienced and completely dependent on the success of an untested patent. The company promoter deployed the then-common strategy of underpricing, consequently the company was under-capitalised and unable to finance production. Colour Snapshots Ltd. was liquidated in the Great Slump of 1929–33. This article situates it in wider cultures of the market, cultural practices of invention and ideologies of modernity and innovation, and argues that the rise and fall of Colorsnap expresses the opportunistic practices of invention and speculative finance of the time.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Ilford Ltd, Colour Snapshots Ltd, colour photography, amateur photography, photography patents, 1929, Wall Street Crash, London Stock Exchange, photography industry
Divisions: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 21 Oct 2021 07:02
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2023 21:26
DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.1953260
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3141071

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