On a different wavelength: 100 years of infrared photography
This year sees the 100th anniversary of the first published
infrared photograph. Though there had been infrared spectrograms
produced before 1910, as far as we know the first infrared
images in print were taken by Professor Robert Williams Wood and
published in the October 1910 Photographic Journal of the Royal
Photographic Society (RPS). Wood's pictures later appeared in
the Illustrated London News in June 1911, as shown at the top of
this page. Infrared radiation was discovered in 1800 and today
has a multitude of applications including the laser in your CD
player and those remote controls for your TV that always vanish
down the back of the sofa. Infrared imaging is widely used,
though primarily in other fields away from artistic photography
such as forensics, medical and scientific imaging and astronomy.
Infrared photography shows us a world we can recognise, and yet
it has an alien quality to it, something like Mars in early
science fiction film