Abstract

"Oil of Vitriol: Sicilian Sulfur Mining and the Photo-Chemical Trade at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"

Katherine Mintie, Yale University (katherine.mintie@yale.edu)

This paper examines the extraction of and trade in sulfuric acid, a compound essential to the photography industry due to its role in the production of silver nitrate. The primary source of sulfur for American photochemical companies at the turn of the twentieth century was Sicily. Through analyses of photographs and texts by period observers familiar with the Sicilian sulfur industry, primarily memoirist Louise Hamilton Caico and playwright Luigi Pirandello, this paper will show that the demand for sulfur had devastating effects on the Sicilian environment and populace.

By tracing the source of sulfur for the American photochemical industry, this paper not only seeks to expand current knowledge of photographic materials and labor but to situate early photography within the practices of extractive capitalism. In other words, it proposes that zooming in to consider foundational elements of photographic production simultaneously offers a zoomed out view of the often obscured economic structures on which the photography industry rested. From this perspective, we can begin to treat photographs not only as evidence of oppressive labor conditions and environmental degradation but as products of these very systems.