Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A pole vaulter in motion, algae, prehistoric footprints, human anatomy, solar eclipses, the Alps - images in scientific photographs can puzzle, startle and inspire thinking. This book presents a collection of photographs of science subjects that raised questions about catastrophe theory, human evolution and behaviour, tha nature of matter, and the place of our planet in universe. The contributors to this volume consider the history of these images, their technical genesis, and the questions of representation they may inspire."

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Seven essays by six scholars discuss the way photography has changed our view of reality and our sense of beauty. The first three include an analysis of the influence of the printed drawings that preceded photography (Mimi Cazort), the history of photography up to 1845 (Larry J. Schaaf), and the 19th-century developments of light-sensitive materials, with a detailed treatment of Lippmann's interference method (John P. McElhone). The remaining essays treat, in each case historically, four different realities revealed by photography: the variety of patterns from living forms to those made by high energy-particles in a bubble chamber (Ann Thomas); the forms revealed by medical photography of the 19th century (Martin Kemp); the successive stages of movement in an extensive treatment, including the work of Mary, Muybridge, and Edgerton (Marta Braun); the physical universe from the earliest eclipse photographs to the recent Hubble deep field photos (Thomas). The 152 plates (35 in color) are well coordinated with the text. The avoidance of scientific details and the informative illustrations combine to make the range, content, and beauty of scientific photography accessible to the general reader. Undergraduate through professional. A. B. Stewart emeritus, Antioch College

Booklist Review

This album examines and illustrates the earliest applications of photography to scientific purposes. Thomas, a photography curator at Canada's National Gallery, edits seven chapters devoted either to the technology of photography, beginning with the daguerreotype, or to specific subjects in which photography opened the doors to new discoveries about natural forms and processes. Astronomy was such a subject, and early 1850s images of the moon and sun appear here, capped off by recent ones of Apollo in lunar orbit. Human anatomy and motion constitute one whole chapter, illustrated by the pioneering photographs of Albert Londe and Eadweard Muybridge. The book contains 150 images in all, depicting a variety of subjects: skeletons, plants, bullets, liquid droplets. This visual richness will attract students of photography's early history in science. --Gilbert Taylor