The Reading Art Book Club meets next on February 10, at 2:30 pm in the Las Cruces Museum of Art. The book club will have an open, group discussion on the book Capturing the Light: The Birth of Photography, a True Story of Genius and Rivalry, by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport. “Captured Light: The Invention of Still Photography”, from History’s Modern Marvels series, will be shown prior to the meeting at 1:30 pm.
An intimate look at the journeys of a gentleman scientist and a visionary artist as they struggled to capture the world around them and, in the process, invented modern photography. During the 1830s, in an atmosphere of intense scientific enquiry fostered by the industrial revolution, two quite different men developed dramatically different photographic processes in total ignorance of each other’s work. These two lone geniuses – Henry Fox Talbot in the seclusion of his English country estate and Louis Daguerre in the heart of post-revolutionary Paris – through diligence, disappointment, and hard work overcame extraordinary odds to achieve the one thing people had for centuries been trying to do – solve the ancient puzzle of how to capture light and make nature ‘paint its own portrait’. With the creation of their two radically different processes – the Daguerreotype and the Talbotype – these two giants of early photography changed the world and how we see it.
Drawing on a wide range of original, contemporary sources and featuring plates in color, sepia and black and white, many of them rare or previously unseen, Capturing the Light charts an extraordinary tale of genius, rivalry and human resourcefulness in the quest to produce the world’s first photograph.
Reading Art Book Club meetings are free and open to the public. Join us even if you haven’t read the book! For more information or for details on book selections, contact Stephanie Abdon at 541-2217 or e-mail sabdon@las-cruces.org.
The Museum of Art is located at 491 N. Main Street between the Branigan Cultural Center and the Museum of Nature and Science. The exhibits and events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10:00 am to 4:30 pm and Saturday, 9:00 am to 4:30 pm.
For more information, contact the Museum of Art at 575.541.2137 or visit las-cruces.org/museums. If you need an accommodation for a disability to enable you to fully participate in this event please contact the museum 48 hours prior to the event.