Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History

by Anika Burgess Narrated by Marian Hussey

Overview

Today it's routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera underwater, watch a movie, or view an X-ray. But the photographic innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were experimental, revelatory, and sometimes dangerous-and many of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors behind them were memorable eccentrics. In Flashes of Brilliance, writer and photo editor Anika Burgess engagingly blends art, science, and social history to reveal the most dramatic developments in photography from its birth in the 1830s to the early twentieth century.

Burgess explores how photographers uncovered new vistas, including catacombs, cities at night, the depths of the ocean, and the surface of the moon. She describes how photographers captured the world as never seen before. She takes us on a tour of astonishing innovations. Burgess also delves into the early connections between photography and society that are still with us today: how photo manipulation was an issue right from the start; how the police used the telephoto lens to surveil suffragists; and how leading Black figures like Sojourner Truth adapted self-portraits to assert their identity and autonomy.

Filled with fascinating tales, Flashes of Brilliance shows how the rise of a new art form transformed culture and our view of the world.

Editorial Reviews

Kim Beil

"Anika Burgess has not only an eye for overlooked images but also an ear for the unusual characters and distinctive voices that narrated this history as it unfolded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her enthusiasm for photography’s surprising stories, and her occasional wry aside from the shores of the twenty-first century, is infectious."

Phillip Prodger

"Cleverly weaving together photography, art, and science, Anika Burgess reveals not only the challenges that made early photographs look the way they do but also the excitement, uncertainty, creativity, and even the danger of working at the frontiers of visual technology. Beautifully written, like a great work of fiction—except, incredibly, it’s all true."

Tom Ang

"An entertaining, insightful, and informative romp through photography’s early days. Anika Burgess conveys well how the pioneers were by turns inventive, foolhardy, ruggedly stubborn, and visionary. As one who is knowledgeable on the subject, it was delightful for me to learn much that I didn't know."

Bianca Bosker

"A fascinating immersion among the obsessive rogues, daring experimenters, and fearless pioneers who risked life and limb to bring photography to life. Anika Burgess’s astonishing history dives into the phenomenal photographic breakthroughs that changed our world—and how we see it. You’ll never look at a snapshot the same way again."

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-04-17
Say “prunes”—as people were once advised when sitting for austere portraits.

Photography is a dangerous business. Or at least it used to be. Consider some of the perils that Burgess chronicles in her enlightening book about the early days of the industry. In the mid-19th century, a photo chemist’s windows blew out as gun cotton—a darkroom ingredient—exploded. Two years later, the man wasn’t as lucky: He was killed in another explosion. In the 1880s, German scientists inventedBlitzlichtpulver, or lightning flash powder, which provided illumination for photographers. True to its name, the stuff was potent. In 1890, a photographer eager to document the opening of the Pulitzer Building in Manhattan packed an “extra quantity” of flash powder, causing a blast that took out 50 windows. Beyond working with explosives, photographers used cyanide as a fixing agent. It was lethal when it got into cuts, and touching it led to swelling, “intolerable” pain, and amputations. Happily, not all is grim in this entertaining account. Burgess, a former visual editor atAtlas Obscura, tells of many creative photographers, going back to Nicéphore Niépce, whose modest shot out a window dates to 1826. (Be grateful, Instagrammers: The world’s oldest surviving photo took eight hours to capture.) Among the author’s better-known subjects is the creative Frenchman Nadar. Burgess’ dry wit comes through in this description: “Like most people who operate under a mononym, he was also a talented self-promoter.” Nadar took cameras into the catacombs and sewers of Paris and above the city, in his balloonLe Géant (which was taller than the Statue of Liberty). Aerial photography drew experimenters at the time—one of the many images included shows a woman (probably Lela Cody, photographer Samuel Cody’s wife) dangling from a batlike kite. The book is packed with equally astonishing details, covering the fields of underwater photography, microphotography (great for concealing sexually explicit images), and—long before artificial intelligence—photo manipulation.

A scintillating history that’ll have you looking at photography in a new light.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193156963
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	07/08/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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