📷 “Photographs are made to lie” (1897) + 🚲 “Bicycle Insanity” (1896)

These two pieces from the last decade of the 1900s cover two big consumer trends at the time: personal photographs and bicycle riding. Photographs of oneself were popular, as they are now and so was retouching! Photoshop used to mean a literal photography shop where edits were made to photos to enhance beauty, enlarge eyes and reduce bulge - the article lamented this trend for encouraging vanity. The bicycle was blamed by some doctors as causing insanity, often it was women that were the supposed victims and these notions were rooted in socially conservative resistance to women riding bikes.

📷 'Flatter the Sitters Vanity' - Emporia Daily Republican, Kansas 04 Aug 1897 - https://www.newspapers.com/clip/80037575/emporia-daily-republican/#

🚲 “Bicycle Insanity” - The Evening Telegram - Mar 20, 1896 https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=35&dat=18960320&id=B6QmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VjsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3060,4534059&hl=en