Last chance to see Science Museum show linking old and new photographs
Just a few weeks remain of an exhibition at the Science Museum, co-curated by a Sussex academic, in which early science photos are being displayed alongside the modern and contemporary art photography they inspired.
Revelations: Experiments in Photography, which closes on 13 September, is the result of four years of preparatory work by Art History lecturer Dr Benedict Burbridge together with Greg Hobson, Curator of Photographs at the National Media Museum in Bradford.
The Science Museum’s new Media Space is showcasing rare scientific photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries that capture phenomena invisible to the naked eye including x-rays and electrical charges.
The photos are juxtaposed with works by modern and contemporary art photographers, showing how earlier science influenced these artists.
The exhibition has received widespread coverage in the media, including from titles such as the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian and the Telegraph.
Photographs from the 'Revelations' exhibition
Dr Burbridge said: “Co-curating this exhibition has been an extraordinary opportunity that I am incredibly grateful for.
“While preparing for the exhibition I was given access to the archives of the National Photography Collection at the National Media Museum, which includes photographs dating back to 1840. More than 50 loans from a range of international museums and galleries complete the exhibition.
Dr Burbridge’s research played a central role in identifying links between early scientific photography and later photographic art, and in conceptualising the importance of these links.
He explained: “The early scientific photographs exposed and surpassed the limits of human vision. In doing so, they revealed important formal possibilities, and spoke in clear and articulate terms about man’s changing relationship to science and technology.
“These qualities lie at the core of the photographs’ appeal for 20th century artists; and they have found currency again among artists working in the context of our own ‘digital age’.”
When asked about his favourite part of the exhibition, Dr Burbridge cited two pictures created by the 19th-century scientist Henri Becquerel while he was researching radioactivity. “Becquerel exposed photographic paper to material including uranium salts.
“This produced amazing, almost abstract representations of radiation, which we have placed in dialogue with work by artists including Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Walead Beshty”.
Dr Burbridge edited a book to accompany the exhibition, titled Revelations: Experiments in Photography, which also contains three essays by him.
Revelations is one of a number of high-profile partnerships associated with the Sussex Centre for the Visual, which has also been working with Brighton Photo Biennial, Tate Modern, the Barbican and the BFI (British Film Institute) this year.
After finishing its run at the Media Space, Revelations will move to the National Media Museum for another showing from 19 November 2015 to 7 February 2016.
An interview with Dr Burbridge about the exhibition is available to watch on the BBC World Service’s website.