Revelations: Experiments in Photography

Interesting exhibition at the Science Museum looking at how new ways of seeing created by early photography was rapidly used by science and how this work then influenced modern and contemporary photography.

Photography was taken up very quickly by scientists partly to produce a very accurate record of the world around them but also because it could be used to record things smaller, further away or faster than the eye could see. There were some wonderful images such as a picture of the moon from 1851 and an x-ray of a foot in a boot with all the stitching showing. I always love the Maybridge images analyzing movement.

The modern section looked at how artists began to use these scientific images as inspiration for their work. It also looked at the shift in this period (up to 1979) from an enthusiastic and excited approach to science pessimism and uncertainty about it. There were photographs which started to use unusual angles or magnification to show the abstract in the world around us. I loved the pictures of fruit being shot!

In the contemporary section there are comparison between the advanced early photography brought and those brought about by the digital age. I loved Idris Khan’s take on Maybridge photo shopping the series of images into one. Also Ori Gersht’s take on a Dutch flower still life, in which he places flower arrangements in liquid nitrogen and blows them up, recording in a hyper real style the moment of destruction.

I must admit in the first section I wasn’t too sure where the show was going and it felt a bit heavy on technical detail of techniques however that section had set you up to understand the following two and the commentary led you through well. It was a well curated show.

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