Keywords

• The essay deals with the problem of working women and hand colouring in Italy between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. It moves from some general issues
• such as the relation between the colouring trade and the other professions involved with the diffusion of modernity
• the continuity with other colouring praxis (i.e. photography)
• the possibility of framing the phenomenon in a tradition of hidden working women. After a synthetic reconstruction of the general context
• the text investigates working women and division of labour in the Roman laboratories of Cines between 1905 and 1910. The main sources of the investigation are journals
• magazines and handbooks of photography and cinematography
• together with other sources testifying the state of feminine work in Italy during this period