PHOTOGRAPHS
Loewy, Maurice Moritz; Puiseux, Pierre Henri
Austria / France (1833 - 1907); France (1855 - 1928)
Mer des Plaines Golfe des Iris Platon [Sea of the Flat Iris Gulf Plains]
1896
Photogravure
22 5/8 x 18 15/16 in. (57.5 x 48.1 cm) image size; 31 5/8 x 23 7/8 in. (80.3 x 60.6 cm) sheet size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company
FA 97.98

Pierre Puiseux, official astronomer of the Paris Observatory, collaborated with photographer Maurice Loewy to produce the most complete photographic atlas of the moon’s surface then available. Published in four volumes between 1896 and 1910, the Atlas Photographique de la Lune contained more than 6,000 telescopic photographs of the moon’s surface. Though these pictures did not ultimately prove Puiseux’s theory that the planet’s craters were created by volcanic activity, it did make visible features of the planet’s topography not previously available and set a new standard for astronomical atlases.

-- Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: Selections from the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, July 12 to November 10, 2002.