A photographer's compilation of the rich materiality of science photography
Andrea Ferrari's (born 1970) new book By Means of the Sun compiles analogue and digital images taken or simply selected by Ferrari, that were made for scientific or creative purposes, and were produced by a camera or by direct chemical modification of the film, as well as drawings that, through the mediation of the lens, themselves turn into photographs.
This book deftly reflects the current state of photography, one that is postdigital and postmodern, omnivorous and protean. Beginning with the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, to whom this project is dedicated, Ferrari's wide-ranging sequence of images touches on themes as vast as the beginnings of photography and the origin of the world, drawing as a link between image and writing, and the egg as an archetypal form.