Photography in the History of Observation: Craftsmanship and the Labour of Mechanical Reproduction
Project by Prof. Dr Omar W. Nasim
This project combines the history of photography with the history of science and technology to examine the role and significance of photographic materials and practices in shaping and reshaping astronomy during the era of glass-plate photography. In addition to paper star catalogues, the day-to-day work with and on these plates left a trail of marks, notes and labels made or affixed directly onto the plates. These traces, marks and labels, together with industrial information regarding plate manufacture, photographic emulsions and pre-exposure treatments, are important indicators of how astronomical knowledge was produced through glass-plate photography. They also represent traces of large multinational markets in photographic raw and finished materials and their integration into scientific practice. The hybrid nature of photography is emphasised in order to challenge standard accounts of its media-specificity. This means that photography is combined with drawing, plaster casting and other more traditional media in the routine manual work involving photography at the observatory, for instance. Photography is intermedial. This new research goes beyond contemporary scholarship by revealing how photography was used by scientists in their day-to-day practices, and how standards were established for the manufacture and use of glass-plate photography in astronomy and more broadly; in both cases, the materiality of photography will be central. We aim to demonstrate that the ‘information’ contained on these glass objects extends beyond the image.
Current:
See also Astronomy’s Glass Archive.
Publications:
“Photography and Hybrid Images in the History of Astronomical Practice,” in *Hybrid Photography: Intermedial Practice in Science and Humanities*, eds. Stefanie Klamm, Sara Hillnhüter and Friedrich Tietjen, (Bloomsbury Press, 2020, in press).
“Handling the Heavens: Things and the Photo-Objects of Astronomy,” in *Photo-Objects: On the Materiality of Photographs and Photo-archives in the Humanities and Sciences*, ed. Costanza Caraffa, et al. (Berlin: EOA, 2019, in press).
“The Labour of Handwork in Astronomy: Between Drawing and Photography in Anton Pannekoek,” in Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society, eds. Chaokang Tai, Bart van der Steen, and Jeroen van Dongen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), pp. 251–286.
“James Nasmyth on the Moon; Or on Becoming a Lunar Being Without the Lunacy,” in Selene’s Two Faces: From 17th-Century Drawings to Spacecraft Imaging, ed. Carmen Pérez González. (Brill, 2018) pp. 147–187.
“Astrophotography and John Herschel’s ‘Skeletons’” in Showing and/or Proving?: Photography as a Cultural Technique and Medium of Knowledge, ed. Herta Wolf (Berlin: Akademie Verlag’s Series: Studies in Theory and History of Photography, 2016) pp. 157–78.
“The ‘Landmark’ and ‘Groundwork’ of Stars: John Herschel, Photography and the Drawing of Nebulae,” in *Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science*, 2011, 42: 67–84.