The Moon

John Adams Whipple|James Wallace Black

1857–60 · Salted paper print from glass negative · Photographs

Whipple and his partner Black collaborated with scientists at Harvard College Observatory over the course of a decade, adapting new photographic processes to astronomical research. After the observatory installed a new clock drive on the telescope in 1857, the pair photographed the moon using collodion-coated glass negatives, from which they produced salted paper prints. This example appears to have been made by cutting the image of the moon out of an earlier print and rephotographing it against a dark background. This may have been done to enlarge the lunar orb or to eliminate imperfections in the original background.

Artist

John Adams Whipple|James Wallace Black

Date

1857–60

Medium

Salted paper print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Robert O. Dougan Collection, Gift of Warner Communications Inc., 1981