Really enjoyed this. I’ve made use of the Artemis II mission as an extended metaphor for the state of photography education but I was more focused on the toilet! Your observation about the visibility of the Pillars of Creation is fascinating. What do photographs help us to see? When do they prevent us from seeing what’s also there? It’s as true of those early landscapes of colonised lands as it is of deep space!
Thanks for your comment, Jon. It's true that those Hubble images stretch our understanding of what photography is. There's certainly beauty in them, but - as in any Earthbound photograph - they are also packets of information. I wonder if to an astrophysicist those images are as functional as a medical X-Ray or an estate agent's shot of the original features; just something to be used.
Incidentally, I once interviewed a scientist from Imperial College about the production and use of electron microscope images and many of the same thoughts occurred in relation to the sub-microscopic world. A grain of sand, eh...
Photographs are always hiding and revealing simultaneously it seems. I wonder if this is as true of the technical image as it is of the cultural? What do visualisations of deep space and portraits of the queer community have in common?
Really enjoyed this. I’ve made use of the Artemis II mission as an extended metaphor for the state of photography education but I was more focused on the toilet! Your observation about the visibility of the Pillars of Creation is fascinating. What do photographs help us to see? When do they prevent us from seeing what’s also there? It’s as true of those early landscapes of colonised lands as it is of deep space!
Thanks for your comment, Jon. It's true that those Hubble images stretch our understanding of what photography is. There's certainly beauty in them, but - as in any Earthbound photograph - they are also packets of information. I wonder if to an astrophysicist those images are as functional as a medical X-Ray or an estate agent's shot of the original features; just something to be used.
Incidentally, I once interviewed a scientist from Imperial College about the production and use of electron microscope images and many of the same thoughts occurred in relation to the sub-microscopic world. A grain of sand, eh...
PS Your Substack deserves many more readers!
Photographs are always hiding and revealing simultaneously it seems. I wonder if this is as true of the technical image as it is of the cultural? What do visualisations of deep space and portraits of the queer community have in common?