Richard Spruce and the Trials of Victorian Bryology

By Elaine Ayers

Obsessed with the smallest and seemingly least exciting of plants — mosses and liverworts — the 19th-century botanist Richard Spruce never achieved the fame of his more popularist contemporaries. Elaine Ayers explores the work of this unsung hero of Victorian plant science and how his complexities echoed the very subject of his study. more

The Wellcome Library’s Top 10 Open Images

By Catherine Draycott

THE WELLCOME LIBRARY - Catherine Draycott, head of Wellcome Images, gives a run down of the Top 10 most downloaded images from the collection of more than 100,000 that the Wellcome Library made available free from restrictions earlier this year. more

Watching the World in a Dark Room: The Early Modern Camera Obscura

By Julie Park

Centuries before photography froze the world into neat frames, scientists, poets, and artists streamed transient images into dark interior spaces with the help of a camera obscura. Julie Park explores the early modern fascination with this quasi-spiritual technology and the magic, melancholy, and dream-like experiences it produced. more