Latent phenomena: space, time and optical unconscious in scientific photographs

Abstract

The present article – Latent phenomena: space, time and unconscious optical in scientific photographs – suggests approaches between Walter Benjamin's notions of the Optical Unconscious and the ideas of Phenomenological Reduction as described by Abraham Moles. The article adopts such concepts to explore the universe of traditional scientific photography: pictures of the very small, the far-off, the excessively rapid and of notably slow phenomena. By noting that such phenomena are not visible by the naked eye, the article builds a narrative that reveals how some methods are adopted to apprehend (or capture) and to observe latent phenomena, which presents themselves in distinct spatial and temporal scales, visible only by using what we will be referring to as Prostheses, or advanced "to-see" mechanisms.