Book review by Geoff Olson

haidon is an art-house publisher best known for Century, an immense compilation of 20th century photojournalism. Heaven and Earth is less ambitious in physical proportions, but larger in scope. No less than the cosmos in its entirety is the focus of this lavish work.

The key here is the subtitle, Unseen by the Human Eye. Since the invention of the daguerreotype in the 19th century, the camera has become one of Marshall McCluhan’s "extensions of man," spelunking deeper into the interstices of space and time. From the electrified tips of scanning electron microscopes to the cold dead eye of the Hubble telescope, our vision of the universe has been immeasurably extended.

Light is but a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the retina is limited to the range of colours seen in the rainbow. The shortest visible wavelengths (blue-violet) to the longest (red) circumscribe the world we can know by unaided sight. Outside this spectrum are the realms of the infrared, ultraviolet and even radio waves.

"In musical terminology the wavelength of visible light covers less than one octave," writes astronomical photographer David Malic in the book’s introduction. "In the middle of this range is a wavelength of 550 nanometres, corresponding to greenish-yellow light, the visual equivalent of middle C. A nanometre is small, a billionth of a metre, but the full extent of the electromagnetic spectrum - from short wavelength gamma rays to long wavelength radio waves - covers an astonishing range, almost 75 octaves."

By regarding the wavelengths of light as octaves in the electromagnetic field, we can reasonably say that science and technology has enlarged our appreciation of nature’s song.

The most stunning images previously unseen by the naked eye were revealed by the space missions of the ‘60s. The simple image of the blue-green jewel of planet Earth, hanging like a bauble in the immensity of space, became the primary image of the ecological movement. (A large middle section of Heaven and Earth is devoted to photographs of Earth’s wild places, from the rainforests of British Columbia to the mountains of the Himalayas, taken from the space shuttle).

Phaidon’s visual glossary of creation follows scales from the quantum to the cosmic. A scanning tunneling electron microscope reveals the three-dimensional structure of DNA. A butterfly’s scales, thin wafers arranged to give the insect its iridescence - the same principle underlying the colours of a thin film of oil in water - resembles the electrical glow of a Vegas marquee.

Some of the more intriguing pictures are of things just out of range of the human eye. A micrograph of a grain of pollen looks for all the world like some biomorphic spacecraft. A dust mite becomes a DreamWorks - rendered alien strider. The underside of a gecko’s foot is revealed to be a complex pattern of ridges and minute hairs. "These tiny structures give geckos an amazing ability to climb," says the text, "enabling them to walk up and across ceilings and even cling to glass, finding footholds in the microscopic imperfections in the smoothest surfaces."

Heaven and Earth demonstrates an interesting pattern in nature; how self-similar it appears at different scales. A radioisotope tracing out the circulatory system in the human brain is echoed in the fractal network of channels in the Lena Delta in northeastern Russia. The pathways traced by subatomic particles under an intense magnetic field are hinted at in a satellite image of Hurricane Bonnie, swirling over the eastern seaboard. This logarithmic spiral is one of the universe’s favourite themes, and it shows up again in an image of the spiral galaxy M83, a look-alike of our own Milky Way galaxy, 20 million light years from Earth.

When addressing the majestic vistas from microscopic and macroscopic scales, words fail - literally. It’s best to seek out a copy of Heaven and Earth and see for yourself. In its colourful depiction of nature’s octaves, the book is more than a book of photos - it’s a hymn to creation. Phaidon, 383 pages, $75.

Geoff Olson is a Vancouver writer and political cartoonist. Contact him at gefo@telus.net





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