Revelations

Published alongside a major exhibition, Revelations explores a radical expansion of the visual field brought about by early scientific photography, and the ways this informed and inspired photography's applications within modern and contemporary art. Early scientific imagery such as X-Ray, photomicrography and experimental high-speed photography exposed and surpassed the limits of human vision. In doing so, it revealed important formal possibilities to artists, and spoke to them in clear and articulate terms about man’s changing relationship to science and technology. Drawing on the National Collections held in Bradford and London, and further international collections, a selection of photographs, book spreads and other documents demonstrate new modes of representation established by early scientific photography and their profound impact on the histories of photographic art.