Episode Details

Anika Burgess, author of Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History, explores the dangerous, experimental origins of photography, commencing with Daguerre's 1839 copper-plate daguerreotypes. Burgess details the introduction of the wet collodion glass process, which required toxic chemicals like cyanide and highly explosive gun cotton. Key figures highlighted include the eccentric Nadar, Louis Boutan's pioneering underwater photography, Carleton Watkins's mammoth prints of Yosemite, and Jacob Riis's flash-powder documentation of Manhattan tenements. The discussion spans early astronomical photography of the moon, medicine's risky embrace of X-rays, and Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies that birthed cinema. (1)