Flashes of Brilliance

Today it's routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera under the sea, or gaze at an X-ray. But the innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were incredible and sometimes dangerous, and the innovators often memorable eccentrics. In this absorbing mix of science, art, and social history, Anika Burgess describes early aerial photography experiments with balloons, kites, and pigeons; reveals how photographers first captured the surface of the moon, the bottom of the sea, and the structure of snowflakes; recounts the race to photograph motion and how it led to moving pictures; and delves into photography's social effects, including the use of the telephoto lens to surveil suffragists and of self-portraits by Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass to assert their autonomy. Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating tales, Flashes of Brilliance shows how the rise of a new art form transformed culture and our view of the world.

About the Author

Anika Burgess is a photo editor and writer whose work has been published in the New York Times and Atlas Obscura. She lives in New York.