Project Overview
Images from Science 3 was organized to celebrate the production of extraordinary images featuring science. At its core mission, the project wanted to explore the interface of science, technology, art, design, and communication. Science images unlike most other genres of images rarely find their way into art museums.
Rochester Institute of Technology Professors Michael Peres, Bob Rose, Chris Jackson, and Ted Kinsman, and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Professor Norman Barker are passionate about scientific images. They have enjoyed long careers as photographers and designers, but also as authors, educators, and industry leaders. Because of their interests in science images, they collaborated to produce the third traveling exhibition sharing some of the world’s most extraordinary images and image-makers who explore science as a subject.
Images from Science 3 is built upon the successes of the Images from Science I and II exhibitions. Images From Science I premiered fall 2002 in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology. Launched at the infancy of digital photography, it contained 59 photographs and traveled to 22 venues in 7 countries until 2007 when it was retired.
Images From Science 2 premiered in the Fall of 2008 and was displayed in 13 venues before being lost in shipping from the UK to the Netherlands in 2014. A complete listing of these exhibition histories can be found by following this link. Both exhibitions were produced as experiments to explore the power of the Internet as the sole tool used to advertise, identify and ultimately display some of the world’s most powerful photographs of science at the time of their production.
Much has changed since those exhibitions were displayed including the explosion of new applications of imaging technologies. Coupled with new optical and other imaging software, nothing seems out of the realm of what is possible in the creation of images for science. The dynamic release of new imaging equipment including the smartphone coupled with the explosive use of social Media including Twitter®, and Instagram®, has allowed for images to be shared worldwide synchronously. One could make a compelling argument that imaging has become a science unto itself and is an integral part of every contemporary research center.
Images from Science 3 was designed to identify and showcase up to 75 extraordinary examples of both still and moving images that reveal science in new and unique ways. Similar to past projects, it used the Internet as its primary voice to promote IFS 3 but this exhibit also features computer generated images (CGI) including animations and illustrations. The organizers hoped to include student images as a part of the exhibition as well. The images that comprise the exhibition were selected by an international panel of experts from around the world.
Judging was accomplished online. The panel of IFS 3 judges included photography editors, scientists, physicians, science photographers, and business owners, who live in Europe, Australia, and North America. You can find more about them in the About The Judges.
Judging took place from February 1 to February 28, 2019. After judging, seventy-one contributors from fifteen countries were invited to submit eighty-two images for the Exhibition.
