The Path of Totality
On wonder and picturing the solar eclipse
"Everything is strange. Things are huge and very small. The stalks of flowers are thick as oak trees. Leaves are high as the domes of vast cathedrals. We are giants, lying here, who can make forests quiver." Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Are you watching the eclipse today?
It’s fun to think about everybody looking skyward this afternoon, peering into the heavens to look at the sun and moon together. This kind of thing doesn’t happen often, and it has me thinking about wonder, which feels in small supply these days. We were talking about social media again yesterday. Obviously, it’s miraculous and has brought plenty of good, but our conversation was focused on its drawbacks and how we weren’t sure if it was a net negative, if only for the fact that it kept us indoors staring at screens when we should be outside experiencing the world.
I saw this Carleton Watkins eclipse picture on Twitter last night, and I realized that, yes, of course, photographers have been turning their cameras toward the sky from the beginning. I love Watkins and hadn’t seen this picture before, so I did some digging and found a wonderful little story on the Getty Museum website:
Standing atop Mount Santa Lucia in northern California at approximately 2:34 p.m. on January 11, 1880, Carleton Watkins was able to make only one exposure during the instant of complete eclipse. Accompanied by professors from the newly created University of California and the United States Naval Observatory, Watkins waited slightly more than an hour for the moon to begin its movement and assume its temporary position directly in front of the sun. The radiating sun, its brilliance hidden by the black moon, lies suspended over a sea of clouds whose rippling waves dominate the sky. Only the inclusion of the treetops in the foreground serves to ground the image in a familiar reality.
Photography is about documenting the natural world, and it’s inextricably bound up in time, so Watkins’ image is a perfect metaphor for why the medium fascinates so many of us. (You can see another picture he made on the same day here.)
Although the moon is not visible in this photograph by Eugène Atget, its presence and appeal are implied. The crowd gathered in Paris’s Place de la Bastille on April 17, 1912, observing a solar eclipse through viewing apparatuses. Atget, rather than recording the astronomical event itself, turned his attention to its spectators. Though Atget made more than 8,500 pictures of Paris and its environs in a career that spanned over thirty years—most documenting the built environment—this photograph is an unusual example that focuses on a crowd of people.
Sometimes, the past isn’t past after all! It’s fun to think about people a century ago finding pleasure in similar ways as we do today. Here’s what Colin had to say about the image:
The best eclipse photos are of people looking at the eclipse. This is from 1911. It’s by Atget, and it was a big influence on people like Cartier-Bresson and various surrealists and their fascination with mirrors, reflections, and viewing machines.
Eugène Atget’s image of a crowd of Parisians viewing a solar eclipse through darkened glasses, heads craned upon the distant spectacle, became a key surrealist image, one that found later multiple echoes in photography, including in Cartier-Bresson’s take on Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. There are the same craned necks, the same squinting eyes, the same reflected gazes, and the same mass of people.
It is fascinating how past images find echoes in more recent photography and how ideas on the gaze, reality, power, authorship, responsibility, and human dignity are nothing new but were discussed in the 19th century.
Nothing is new under the sun in other words. Perhaps what matters is if something is a good story, a convincing story, a lasting story? Atget’s picture is all those things.
Atget’s picture reminded me of this famous image of people watching the first 3-D movie in a theater, which I've seen countless times. J.R. Eyerman made this image just forty years after Atget. That’s crazy because the 1950s feel like a world away from the one depicted in Atget’s eclipse photo. I guess big-screen movies and solar eclipses have something in common: watching the experience on a small screen just isn’t the same — you have to be there to really see it. I like that. We’ll be doing something similar and stepping away from our computers to go outside for a few minutes this afternoon. I hope we see something good!
This, too: Aperture posted this image on Instagram this morning, another gem that was new to me. I’ve seen pictures like this before, and this one is a real beauty. The universe, man, it blows your mind sometimes. Kikuji Kawada made the photo in 1987. I don’t know anything about Kawada, so I’m looking forward to reading Aperture’s interview. You might, too — read Kikuji Kawada on the Traumas of History and the Skies above Japan.
What I like most about pictures of people watching eclipses is how everybody looks like a kid. That wide-eyed wonder seems to disappear as we age, and eclipses bring out the childlike curiosity in each of us. The New Yorker published a great feature of David Burnett’s photos of people looking skyward in 2017, which is lots of fun — read Watching the Eclipse with the Photographer David Burnett.
I’ll leave you with this: Rivka Gulchen wrote a terrific piece about the science and culture of solar eclipses, which is fascinating. We read this on our road trip last week and loved it — read A Guide to the Total Solar Eclipse. I hope you like it.
Are you planning to photograph the solar eclipse?
Please email me if you do. I would love to see your images. Have a great week!
A important reminder of the importance of awe in our lives and the way photography provides us an opportunity to experience it.
The one with the audience in the movie theater was interesting, you do not see people dressing up like that to go to the movies, a restaurant or an airport anymore. They even dressed up going to a football game. Not today, you see people with pajamas, gym shorts, etc walking into the store.