The pioneer of color photography died in obscurity: Why? Good old fashioned prudery. Paul Outerbridge, born in 1896 in New York, was at one time a big deal in the world of photography, according to the New York Post, which carries a beautiful photo essay of his work (possibly NSFW, assuming you’re reading this on a weekday). “In the nineteen-thirties, after a decade of finessing the chiaroscuro subtleties of black-and-white, he mastered carbro color printing, an intricate, now obsolete process favored by magazines and Madison Avenue. (Outerbridge literally wrote the book on the subject: ‘Photographing in Color,’ which was published by Random House, in 1940.)” It’s hard to believe now, but at one point color photography was considered vulgar. Outerbridge “believed that the fullest expression of the new color process was the study of the female body — but, again, what was tasteful in black-and-white was considered unseemly in color,” so he fell out of favor. It wasn’t until the 1970s and 1990s that he periodically came into public awareness again for his work.