Carte photographique de la lune, planche XXI (Photographic Chart of the Moon, plate XXI) Possibly 1904 - 1914

Charles Le Morvan made this photographic chart of the moon sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It’s this incredible expanse of greyscale, all these craters and crevices like abstract marks on a canvas. I can almost feel him, the artist, hovering over the photographic plate, coaxing out these subtle gradations, the tones shifting and emerging through experimentation. You have to imagine what it was like back then, pointing a telescope up at the night sky. What was he thinking when he captured this image? Probably something like: if I expose the plate for a little longer, maybe I can bring out more details in the shadows. Think about the grainy texture, like Seurat's pointillism but accidental. It’s like an alien landscape, a reminder of how small we are. I wonder what the process was like compared to other painters of his era. Ultimately, artists are always looking to the cosmos, literally or metaphorically, and moon photography is just one way to do it.