Shep Doeleman on Photographing Black Holes
Date: March 12, 2026 Time: 06:00PM EDT
Location: Barker Center, Thompson Room
How does the act of drawing, engraving, painting, or photographing play a role in thinking and understanding? What is the role of image-making in knowledge production? Across three themes (Earth, Heavens, and Body) we will discuss these questions in case studies from the late Middle Ages to the contemporary.Each day will start with a presentation by image-makers, to reflect on current visual practices of the context of teaching and learning, and research. The main part of the day will contain historical case studies. And each day will be closed by natural scientists reflecting on the role of image-making as doing science.
This interdisciplinary dialogue between current-day practices and the study of historical practices in art and science have been a driving force behind the research of the Research Group Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions. With its broad temporal and thematic scope, the focus on image-making practices as both a highly skilled and highly creative process has become central to understanding how people gained and communicated knowledge.
Please follow the event also online through our VIMEO CHANNEL:
25.06.26 https://vimeo.com/event/590949426.06.26 https://vimeo.com/event/590950027.06.26 https://vimeo.com/event/5909503
Day 2, 26 June: Heavens
9:00-9:30 Guided tour of the accompanying exhibition in the Sala del disegno, Bibliotheca Hertziana (for participants only)
9:30–10:30 Image-maker presentation with discussion
Chair: Sietske Fransen
Silvia Spezzano (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching bei München), Imaging Molecules in Interstellar Space
Coffee break
11:00–13:00 Session 4
Chair: Eelco Nagelsmit (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam / BHMPI)1. Stefan Zieme (CNRS – Observatoire de Paris / PSL), The Diagrams of the First Appendix of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s (1201-74) Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī
2. Eric Jorink (Huygens / KNAW, Amsterdam), Christiaan Huygens and the Mystery of Saturn’s Ring: Observation, Visual Thinking, and Peer Review
3. Antoine Gallay (Université de Lausanne), Making the Incommensurable Tangible: Visualizing the Solar System in Christiaan Huygens’s Cosmotheoros (1698)
Lunch break
14:00–15:30 Session 5
Chair: Lena Heinlein-Müller (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main)
4. Odile Lehnen (Durham University / The Royal Society), A Seat at the Table: Collaborative Observation in the Herschel Household
5. Marvin Bolt (Independent Scholar, USA), In Defense of the Inhabited Sun: Visualizing William Herschel’s Strange Idea
Coffee break
16:00–17:30 Session 6
Chair: Sietske Fransen
6. Nina Caviezel (BHMPI / Universität Basel), From Dust to Data: Cleaning as a Visualizing Practice in Astronomy 7. Charlotte Bigg (CNRS, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris), Blurry Skies
17:30–18:00 Guided tour of the accompanying exhibition in the Sala del disegno, Bibliotheca Hertziana (for participants only)
18:00–19:00 Dinner in Villino (for participants only)
19:00–20:30 Scientist presentation with discussion
Chair: Tanja Michalsky (BHMPI)
Peter Galison (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA), Image Knowledge: Filming Black Holes