On Silver Film

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an evolutionary biologist, researcher on colour, ornithologist, illustrator and author. A passionate fan of diagrams, cross-sections and pea soup. In his spare time, he collects roots (not the mathematical kind).

Science, magic and technology, or in praise of analogue photography.

It seems ironic that the way we think about photography has become so dispassionate – after all, it was once considered a way of locking people’s souls into motionless pictures. We trust the science behind each photograph so much – or perhaps so much time has passed since the first-ever face was captured through a lens – that we think less of clicking the shutter release than we do of pressing the dishwasher power button. And perhaps we do feel more awe when confronted with the wet turmoil inside the dishwasher’s innards than when witnessing what those photons, injected inside the camera, do on its digital matrix.

The photographic qua

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Szymon Drobniak:

an evolutionary biologist, researcher on colour, ornithologist, illustrator and author. A passionate fan of diagrams, cross-sections and pea soup. In his spare time, he collects roots (not the mathematical kind).

Translation: Aga Zano

Publish date: 18.06.2021

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Maciej Świetlik:

an anthropologist without a diploma, a fan of wandering aimlessly and horseback riding without a saddle. He celebrates the Persian New Year. He feels best by the fire, drinking the occasional glass of nice wine.

Here is the first photographic album in history, a perfect combination of science and art. Its author, Anna Atkins, remained anonymous for over 100 years. Today, her blue world regains its shine.

The fact that Anna was born in 1799 in England was not conducive to her scientific career. In the Victorian era, with its biological determinism and puritan morals, a woman was seen first and foremost as a mother and a matron. Anna’s own mother – having fulfilled her main social duty – got ill in childbirth and a year and a half later orphaned her baby. The bitter irony of this stroke of fate is perhaps such that this tragedy helped Anna to fulfil her passion. The strong bond with her father, John George Children, allowed her to progress in a field that transgressed the narrow stage assigned to the social role of a woman. The father, a respected chemist and zoologist, secretary of The Royal Society, not only inspired his daughter’s interest in nature, but also facilitated her contacts with scientific circles. And this was a breakthrough time in the development of natural and technical sciences. Already at the age of 24, Anna – combining her botanical interests with artistic flair – made her debut as the author of drawings for Genera of Shells by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the precursor of the theory of evolution (the book had been translated from the French by Anna’s father).

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An Archivist of Nature

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