Anika Burgess celebrates Flashes of Brilliance on March 19th at 6pm

Join and Barnes & Noble Philadelphia on Thursday, March 19th at 6pm at Barnes & Noble Philadelphia (1708 Chestnut Street) for a discussion of , the story of the wildest experiments in early photography and the wild people who undertook them. Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating tales, Flashes of Brilliance shows how the rise of a new art form transformed culture and our view of the world.

She will be joined in conversation by Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs and Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

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To make this event safe and enjoyable for all attendees, please read the guidelines below before registering for a ticket so that you know what to expect on the day of the event.

General Admission Ticket ***LIMITED QUANTITY AVAILABLE:

• Registering for a General Admission Ticket guarantees entrance to the event for the discussion and signing.
• Seating: Limited quantity is available and will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Standing Room-Only: Limited quantity is available and will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. In the event all seating is filled, ticket holders will be granted a standing view from behind the seated audience -- some views may be more limited/obstructed than others.

ADDITIONAL GUIDELINES:

--Please note that Eventbrite is the only authorized dealer for this event. Each person must have a ticket to enter.

--Due to health and safety and space limitations, those without a ticket will not be permitted into the event space.

--The exact time at which the event ends will be determined on the night of the event. To avoid disappointment, we strongly advise you to arrive on time for the event.

--All event guidelines are subject to change.

--If you have any additional questions, please can call the store directly at: (267) 234-9790.

--Barnes & Noble may cancel this event at any time with or without notice to the ticket holders.

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Anika Burgess is a writer and freelance photo editor. Her writing has been published in The New York Times and Atlas Obscura, and her short humor has appeared in The New Yorker. She has won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York and has presented at Photoville New York, both in relation to her work with the photo archive at The New York Times. She holds degrees in law and history from the University of Sydney, and qualified as a lawyer before changing careers to journalism.

Today it’s routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera underwater, watch a movie, or view an X-ray. But the photographic innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were experimental, revelatory, and sometimes dangerous—and many of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors behind them were memorable eccentrics. In Flashes of Brilliance, writer and photo editor Anika Burgess engagingly blends art, science, and social history to reveal the most dramatic developments in photography from its birth in the 1830s to the early twentieth century.

Writing with verve and an eye for compelling detail, Burgess explores how photographers uncovered new vistas, including catacombs, cities at night, the depths of the ocean, and the surface of the moon. She describes how photographers captured the world as never seen before, showing for the first time the bones of humans, the motion of animals, the cells of plants, and the structure of snowflakes. She takes us on a tour of astonishing innovations, including botanist Anna Atkins and her extraordinary blue-hued cyanotypes and the world’s first photobook; Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey’s famed experiments in capturing motion and their long legacy; large format photography and photographs so small as to be invisible to the naked eye; and aerial photography using balloons, kites, pigeons, and rockets. Burgess also delves into the early connections between photography and society that are still with us today: how photo manipulation—the art of “fake images”—was an issue right from the start; how the police used the telephoto lens to surveil suffragists; and how leading Black figures like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass adapted self-portraits to assert their identity and autonomy.

Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating tales, Flashes of Brilliance shows how the rise of a new art form transformed culture and our view of the world.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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