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'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?

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.