The story of the wildest experiments in early photography and the wild people who undertook them.

Today it’s routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera under the sea, or gaze at an X-ray. But the innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were incredible and sometimes dangerous, and the innovators often memorable eccentrics. In this absorbing mix of science, art, and social history, Anika Burgess describes early aerial photography experiments with balloons, kites, and pigeons; reveals how photographers first captured the surface of the moon, the bottom of the sea, and the structure of snowflakes; recounts the race to photograph motion and how it led to moving pictures; and delves into photography’s social effects, including the use of the telephoto lens to surveil suffragists and of self-portraits by Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass to assert their 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.

Praise & Reviews

“Flashes of Brilliance is a fascinating immersion among the obsessive rogues, daring experimenters, and fearless pioneers who risked life and limb to bring photography to life. From submarine cameras to pigeon photographers, Burgess’ astonishing history dives into the phenomenal photographic breakthroughs that changed our world—and how we see it. You’ll never look at a snapshot the same way again.”

–Bianca Bosker, New York Times best-selling author of Get the Picture

“An entertaining, insightful and informative romp through photography's early days. Anika Burgess conveys well how the pioneers were by turns inventive, foolhardy, ruggedly stubborn and visionary. As one who is knowledgeable on the subject, it was delightful for me to learn much that I didn't know, and to have details filled in with well-focused observation. … As a work that brings early photographers and their experiments to vivid life, as a gallery of sketches for historical and societal backgrounds to today's photographic practice, Flashes of Brilliance is a valuable addition to any photographer's bookshelf. In wearing its researched insights lightly, it's both a fun and educational read.”

–Tom Ang, author of Photography: The Definitive Visual History

“To our eyes, the first photo portraits can look stiff and dull, the sitters stripped of life like insects trapped in amber. Burgess helps us see these pictures in new ways, showing us the vital, flesh-and-blood stories of photographers and their careers—their hopes, struggles, dreams, and frustrations. Cleverly weaving together photography, art, and science, she not only reveals the challenges that made early photographs look the way they do, but also the excitement, uncertainty, creativity, and even the danger of working at the frontiers of visual technology. Beautifully written, like a great work of fiction. Except, incredibly, it’s all true.”

–Phillip Prodger, former Head of Photographs, National Portrait Gallery, London

“Anika Burgess’ charming history of photography delights in the strange and fascinating details of photography’s formative years, featuring everything from recipes for photographer’s cheesecake to experiments with kite or pigeon photography and hidden cameras. She has not only an eye for overlooked images but also an ear for the unusual characters and distinctive voices that narrated this history as it unfolded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Burgess’ enthusiasm for photography’s surprising stories, and her occasional wry aside from the shores of the twenty-first century, is infectious.”

–Kim Beil, author of Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography