Seeing Science offers an insightful and reader-friendly collection of essays and pictures about photography’s role in visualizing science and building human knowledge—from micro to macro levels and everything in between.

Photography and science have long been intertwined, helping to shape the way we look at the world. Scientists use photography as a way to gather information, explore, and learn, but just as important, photography is also used to promote scientific advances and has long served as an interface between the sciences and the public.

Science is less an edifice of facts than a process of discovery and inquiry. In this way, it is not dissimilar to art; artists have engaged with some of the same scientific principles, using photography to imagine the world differently and present us with new experiences and ways of seeing. This volume presents both perspectives, exploring how science is made perceptible, featuring over three hundred images and sixty short texts.

Marvin Heiferman creates projects about photography and visual culture for institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, International Center of Photography, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Heiferman has written for numerous publications, monographs, magazines and blogs, including the New York Times, CNN, Artforum, Design Observer, Art in America, and Aperture. He is the author/editor of over two dozen books on visual culture, including Photography Changes Everything (Aperture/Smithsonian, 2012).

Seeing Science offers an insightful and reader-friendly collection of essays and pictures about photography’s role in visualizing science and building human knowledge—from micro to macro levels and everything in between.

Photography and science have long been intertwined, helping to shape the way we look at the world. Scientists use photography as a way to gather information, explore, and learn, but just as important, photography is also used to promote scientific advances and has long served as an interface between the sciences and the public.

Science is less an edifice of facts than a process of discovery and inquiry. In this way, it is not dissimilar to art; artists have engaged with some of the same scientific principles, using photography to imagine the world differently and present us with new experiences and ways of seeing. This volume presents both perspectives, exploring how science is made perceptible, featuring over three hundred images and sixty short texts.

Marvin Heiferman creates projects about photography and visual culture for institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, International Center of Photography, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Heiferman has written for numerous publications, monographs, magazines and blogs, including the New York Times, CNN, Artforum, Design Observer, Art in America, and Aperture. He is the author/editor of over two dozen books on visual culture, including Photography Changes Everything (Aperture/Smithsonian, 2012).