SFMOMA Brings to Light the Spirit of Early Photography

To many, the fact that early photography was not only stiff portraits and smut must come as a revelation. Delicate human bones and robust snowflakes, monstrous insects and intricate bacteria come to life in the new show, “Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900.” Following the attendance record-breaking Frida Kahlo summer hit, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents scientific photography as art in this profoundly researched exhibit, organized by the Associate Curator of Photography Corey Keller. More than 200 vintage photographs, daguerreotypes and X-ray prints on display emphasize the invisible—microbial life, nebulas, and electric discharges. The fact that the invention of photography coincided with the rapid development of modern science in the early 19th century prompted the use of the former as a recording device for the endless stream of observations and discoveries of the latter. Those fascinating visions of diatoms under a microscope or the Pleiades through a telescope equally called for representation, and the amazing medium generously provided that. In the darkened halls of the photography galleries of SFMOMA the pioneers of the new technology communicate with us today through their meticulous studies of moving birds, cats, and horses; striking lightnings; descending comets, and—a birth of a louse, the eyes of a spider, and a multi-angled image of a naked woman spanking a child (?!) The show runs through January 4, 2009 at 151 Third St., SF. More info at: 415-357-4000 or www.sfmoma.org Image: Wilson Alwyn Bentley, Snowflakes, before 1905; Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.