7 Things We Learned About the World Thanks to Photography

Photography and science have gone hand in hand since Louis Daguerre used his fossil collection as the subject of one of his first daguerreotypes. But photography has also contributed to scientific knowledge, expanding our understanding of the world by capturing what the human eye cannot see or going places humans could not yet go.

Here are seven instances in which film photography, simply by virtue of being able to capture static images, added to our understanding of the world. Today, in a world where we see constant videos from the depths of the ocean and photos from space appear in our Twitter feeds, much of this seems obvious. But these photos represent both incredible technological achievements and contributions to human scientific knowledge.

The list:

  1. How Horses’ Legs Move When They Gallop

  2. How Cats Land on Their Feet

  3. How Birds, Bats, and Insects Fly

  4. How a Bubble Bursts

  5. Animals Live on the Ocean Floor, Miles Below the Surface

  6. What the Beginning of a Nuclear Explosion Looks Like

  7. What the Earth Looks Like from Space

Pictured above: #2 How Cats Land on Their FeetÂ