タイトル：
Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)
Edited by Corey Keller
発行：
Yale University Press
発行日：2008年11月25日
内容：
It is difficult to imagine a historical period richer in scientific discoveries than the years between 1800 and 1900….During this “wonderful century”, as the naturalist and evolutionary theorist Alfred Russel Wallace Dubbed it in his 1898 survey of the age’s achievements, the industrial miracle of the railroad, steamship, bicycle, telegraph, photograph, sewing machine, typewriter, dynamite, and machine gun(to name but a few) were invented. Anesthesia was introduced into surgery, and the notion was advanced that disease was caused by identifiable microbes rather than by indescribable forces afloat in the air.
So BEGINS THIS REMARKABLE CHRONICLE OF SCIENTIFIC PHOTOGRAPHY, from the dawn of the medium in 1840 to the turn of the twentieth century. This lavish catalogue brings together nearly two hundred vintage photographs by prominent photographers, distinguished scientists, and amateur innovators of the time. Dawn from international collections as well as university and laboratory archives, a fascinating assortment of pictures demonstrates early experiments with microscopes, telescopes, motion studies, electricity and magnetism, X-rays and spirit photography. Such photographs revealed the spectacle of the natural world not only to the scientific community but also to an awestruck public, giving rise to an entirely new genre of literature and journalism : popular science.
For a new scientific culture emphasizing the value of empirical observation, the camera’s status as a dispassionate, mechanical observer made it an ideal instrument: the light-sensitive plate was likened to a more perfect version of the human retina, and the camera to an infallible eye. Photography’s relationship to vision and to scientific knowledge became more complicated, however, when the subject was invisible. Over the course of the nineteenth century, amateur and professional worlds infinitesimally small and unimaginably far away. They used photography to try to see, stop, and analyze motion―not only that of humans and animals but also of heavenly bodies, wind, sound waves, and electricity. In 1895 the discovery of X-rays upset the conventional understanding of opacity and transparency, pointing up the perceptual limitations of the human senses. Discoveries such as these inevitably led to pseudoscientific exploitation of the medium; practitioners of spirit photography, for instance, used it to lend credence to claims of ghosts and supernatural phenomena.
This striking volume asks readers to imagine what pictures of the invisible meant in the nineteenth century, when the worlds revealed by modern imaging technologies such as scanning electron microscopes, satellites, and PET scans would have been utterly inconceivable.
（本書カバー裏解説より）
“LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION”
“DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD” Neal Benezra
“ACKNOWLEDGMENTS” Corey Keller
“SIGHT UNSEEN: PICTURING THE INVISIBLE” Corey Keller
“THE SOCIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC EYE” Jennifer Tucker
“INVISIBLE WORLDS, VISIBLE MEDIA” Tom Gunning
“ALMOST A GAME OF CHANCE”: JOSEF MARIA EDER AND SCIENTIFIC PHOTOGRAPHY” Maren Groning
PLATES
With essays by Marie-Sophie Corey, Corey Keller, Erin O’Toole, and Carole Troufleau-Sandrin
MICROSCOPES
TELESCOPES
MOTION STUDIES
ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM
X-RAYS
SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION
（本書目次より）
購入日：2010年7月11日
購入店：
Amazon.co.jp
購入理由：
X線写真について調べていて見つけた1冊。本書はSan Francisco Museum of Modern Artにて開催された19世紀における顕微鏡から心霊写真までの科学写真を集めた展覧会＜Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900＞の展覧会カタログである。
まず、とにかく図版がいい。眺めているだけで時間があっという間に過ぎてしまう。そして、科学写真が現代美術や視覚・知覚に与えた影響はかなり大きいのではないかと気づく。目下の関心であるX線写真の歴史もおもしろく、見えないものを撮ろうとするインヴィジブルな写真の系譜を辿ってみたい。
そして、本書はトム・ガニングを始めとした執筆者陣の論考も充実している。理科系の英単語がわかるかは不安だが、夏には論稿を読んでみようと思う。
』岩波書店、1973年、p.177-178）
