Carte photographique de la lune, planche III (Photographic Chart of the Moon, plate III) Possibly 1909 - 1914

This is "Photographic Chart of the Moon, plate III" by Charles Le Morvan, made with photography, and it invites you to drift. It's like a cosmic game of connect-the-dots. The grayscale palette makes me think about the moon’s silent, silvery glow, a world away, yet captured here. My eyes trace the raised rims and the dark shadows of the craters. Look at how the textures seem to shift from smooth plains to jagged mountainsides, all within this small frame. This one crater, though, towards the bottom right, is calling to me. It looks like a little world in itself, a tiny window onto another dimension. It's funny how photography, like painting, can turn the vastness of the universe into something we can hold in our hands and contemplate. Thinking of Vija Celmins’ meticulous renderings of the night sky, Le Morvan makes me consider the strange beauty of the unknown, and how artists throughout time have tried to capture it. It's like we're all just trying to map the unmappable, one brushstroke, or snapshot, at a time.