Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Things Unseen

One thing that photography does is to capture a moment and freeze it forever. But photography can't show the invisible. Or can it? I don't think of something as ephemeral as a cough as recordable, but according to an article in the New York Times, Dr. Gary Settles and Dr. Julian Tang of the University of Pennsylvania teamed up to photograph the disturbances in the air that result from a cough, among other phenomena. They use special techniques that probably don't involve magic, but do involve a curved mirror and a razor blade! The Times has a slideshow of several images including a gas leak and an AK-47 firing.

Another photographic pioneer who spent years perfecting his craft was W.A. Bentley. His fascination was not with capturing the invisible, but the truly singular: snowflakes. He spent years testing photographic materials and equipment. Lucky for him, he lived in Vermont and had a lot of opportunity to perfect his craft. A Caldecott Award winning children's biography about him by Jacqueline Briggs Martin was published a few years ago, Snowflake Bentley. The story of his life is supplemented by facts and beautiful, wood-cut-style illustrations by Mary Azarian.

I share the book Snowflake Bentley with many kids who have to do reports or read a biography for a genre assignment. One of my favorite things to do when I've sold them on the book is to say, "Do you know what else we have? Snow Crystals by Mr. Wilson A. Bentley himself, his actual published book of actual snowflake pictures. He set out to find out if any two snowflakes are alike, and he's pretty sure he did. What do you think?" They leave with the book, ready to explore.

Also capturing something indefinable through his lens, James Mollison photographs in close-up James and Other Apes. Who knew that a book of ape portraits could be so compelling? A quick glance through the book yields amazing portraits of incredible animals. Delving deeper into the introduction by Jane Goodall and the short (often sad) bios in the back reveals these to be portraits of unique personalities with names like Bonny, Jackson, and Fizi. On my subsequent visits with the apes, bonobos, and orangutans in this book, they became part of an extended family: their own, the Great Apes, and all of ours, as animals and humans together on this one planet.