Key on the Material Record of Color Photography

Key holds a color photograph by its edges. The scene looks immediate, but the image is a material record: light met a prepared surface, and chemical processing made that brief encounter visible and lasting. Fixing a moment does not stop time; it gives something fragile a form that can be kept, handled, and revisited.

The accessible ACS listing identifies Ronald D. Theys’s “Chemistry and Processes of Color Photography” as a Chemical Reviews article dated February 5, 1997, and says the article is available to purchase. That listing establishes the subject of a process-level account, not the particulars of its chemistry. Any account of the review’s specific reaction pathways would require access to the review itself. Key leaves that door closed rather than pretending the listing is the room.