Art/Science Photography

[David Karp]

I am in the process of looking for some photographers (well known or unknown) who, as part of their pursuit of photography as an art, include scientific subjects, or science as a subject. If any of you know of any such photographers, I would appreciate it if you could point me in their direction, and perhaps discuss their work a bit.

Thanks in advance.

[GPS]

I'm one of them. What do you want to discuss?

[David Karp]

Have you a website with photographs? Where are you located?

My school just built a new science building. There is interest in obtaining public artwork for that building.

I cannot make any committments for the school, but I thought that photography is a particularly appropriate form of art for display in a science building, due to the interrelationship and reliance of photography on science and technology, such as physics, chemistry, ecology, etc.

That is why I am asking.

In general, if anyone has any information on photographers working in this genre, I am interested, so that I can present it to the appropriate people. They will ultimately make the decision of what will be purchased.

[GPS]

Dave, PM will be sent.

[Marko]

David,

This guy (http://www.mplonsky.com/photo/)'s day job is being Professor of Science. He picked up photography while trying to document some of his research.

Hope this is what you are looking for.

[Oren Grad]

How about Felice Frankel (http://web.mit.edu/felicef/)?

I suspect it will be easier to find interesting depictions of research subjects than interesting depictions of scientists at work.

[GPS]

PM sent.

[Pat Kearns]

Harlod E. "Doc" Edgerton, an engineer at MIT, and developer of stroboscopic flash. His work with high speed flash is simply outstanding. Some of his photos that come to mind are a bullet slicing through a playing card, exiting an apple, drops of milk, and a football being kicked. He wrote four books on flash photography. Do a google search on his name.

[Oren Grad]

If you're including older stuff, don't forget Berenice Abbott's classic work for the PSSC.

[Struan Gray]

Lennart Nilsson has an award for scientific photography in his name. The list of past winners would be a good place to start: www.lennartnilssonaward.se

My favourite among the winners is the pair Oliver Meckes and Nicole Ottawa. They have a web site at www.eyeofscience.com. Wonderful stuff. They also contributed to a well-known and web-preserved exhibition at RIT a few years back: http://www.rit.edu/~photo/iis.html

All the same, I don't know of any recently-built science departments which are illustrated with work done at other institutes, or work depicting other institutes. A bit soul-sapping if you think about it. A better plan than buying existing photography would be to find an artist, or a series of them, willing to do a residency with the aim of filling in the blanks on the walls. Another tactic would be to employ a picture editor to go through the recent research of those likely to occupy the buildings and identify work that has visual merit. Scientists are often quite bad at recognising the aesthetic value of data their whole training teaches them to regard as utilitarian.

Zen Wires image by Gabriela Conache.

[Andy Eads]

I used to work for the Pacific NW National Lab as a scientific/industrial photographer. There are about 8 national labs in the country. Back when PPofA had an industrial division, we would compete against each other for bragging rights. Most of their photography is in the public domain and they frequently have relationships with science departments at universities. They are very interested in showing off their work and you may find what you need at very reasonable cost. Contact the PR department at your nearest lab to work out the details. Good hunting.
Andy

[Andy Eads]

I forgot to mention that Nikon sponsors a "small world" competition to showcase their microscope line. There are some fabulous photos there with credits. Perhaps the photographers wouldn't mind selling a print or two.
Andy

[Jim Galli]

I make my living in photometrics. I think a picture of a 55mm shell going at x speed past a slit in a sychro ballistic camera with film going at y speed in the opposite direction painting a perfect picture of the bullet on film would make for some great discussion. Of course you'd have to back track and explain to the little darlings what film is.

[Ted Harris]

Contact our own Arne Croell. His crystallography is exactly what you are looking for.

[JW Dewdney]

Everyone seems to be taking this a face value - suggesting 'science photos' to the poor fellow - i.e. the genre which would be used by industry, though - if I'm not mistaken - he's looking more for fine art - using science as a trope (metaphor). I could try to point you more in this direction (i.e. olivia parker, susan derges, others who I can't think of at the moment but soon will, etc..)

[chris jordan]

Dave, send an e-mail to my friend David Julian and ask for JPEG's of some science-related images (especially the mad-scientist image). You might like his work. His e-mail is art@davidjulian.com.

~cj

[Gary J. McCutcheon]

You may want to look at work by Hiroshi Sugimotto, particularly his photographs of three dimensional objects constructed to represent mathmatical formulas. A google search will bring many sites that have his work.

[Arne Croell]

Contact our own Arne Croell. His crystallography is exactly what you are looking for.

oops, thats me! Well, true I did some photos of my scientific subjects (semiconductor crystals) just for the aesthetics of them, although not on large format, since there is no real advantage on a a microscope ( I actually tried - the microscope, Leica Aristomet, I used then had the possibility for both Polaroid pack film including type 665, and 35mm. When I compared prints of the same subject, the 35mm APX 25 pictures were better). Unfortunately, APX 25 is gone now and the newer microscope we use (Zeiss Axio Imager) is even better optically, but all the imaging is digital. Has advantages for workflow, but the field of view for an individual image is much smaller.
Anyway, some of the APX 25 micrographs can be seen here:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=258895



Arne

[neil poulsen]

Jeepers! What a terrific response to a great idea.

[David Karp]

Hi all,

Thanks very much. I only had time to jump on and see if anything else came up. I have to run but will get back on tomorrow and look into your suggestions. Keep them coming. Thanks so much.

[David Karp]

Thanks everyone for your replies. They have been extremely helpful.

JW, you are right. I am looking for possibilities for public art in a science building. Science photography as art that would both uplift due to its aesthetic contribution to the environment, and also to inspire students with the possibilities of their academic endeavors.

Of course, since we are an educational institution, everything goes to a committee. I have forwarded the information from this thread to the art committee (I am a member), which is responsible for making recommendations concerning public art on campus.

And from a personal level, I enjoyed reviewing the sites very much. And Arne, I love the crystal photographs.

[Scott Davis]

Check with the Johns Hopkins Medical School. They have had a famous in-house photo lab for years, and run an "art meets medicine" photography program every year. I forget the name of the guy who runs their lab now, but some years ago I interviewed with them for a job as a lab tech.

http://photography.jhu.edu/

Norman Barker is the guy to talk to- he is the lab director. I remember years ago they were one of about four labs in the US that still ran E-4 for developing color infrared. You could (and I think quite possibly still can) walk in off the street and obtain their lab services.

[Daniel Geiger]

Quick pet-peeve alert. On some of the recommended web sites, there are colorized scanning electron microscope images, the crisp flies etc. SEM images are B&W. Period. All the color is pure photoshop fantasy (Yes, you can do some false color imaging, energy filtering and all that, but for 99% of applications it's B&W). Color is a result of light/photons interacting with an object, while SEMs use electrons that produce brightness values (Variable pressure operation with secondary photon generation is an entirely different story). I happen to run a SEM facility, if anyone should wonder. So please don't throw out all the science in the name of art. See also a recent issue of Seed magazine, with colorized SEMs but not a word about it being nothing but imagination. They also screwed up the scale bars royally, but that's another story.

Re LF on light microscopes (I have a Zeiss Axioskop 2 plus with a set of planapos and an Axiocam HRc), there is no benefit for large film on optical microscopes due to diffraction limiation of resolution with at higher magnification, even with high NA objectives and matched condensers. My Zeiss rep once explained that, so that even the HRc with 13 MP is actually beyond the theoretical resolution limit (remember "empty magnification" above 1,000x?). Similarly, also for SEM, the advantage of using the polaroid sandwich was to get an instant proof, not that the negative would show any more information than on 35 mm film. Yes, I have used all three systems, 35 mm on Philips 512, polaroid on Cambridge 360, and digital on Leo 435VP, Hitachi 3000N, and the current Zeiss EVO40XVP (7 MP files).

OK, I better stop.