I am an astronomer, but these images I came across by chance: Noticing five large paper recycling bins in a hallway at the University of M., I had a closer look at one of them, only to find that they all contained parts of the journals that had formerly been part of the so-called reading room. There it was, a large part of the history of astronomy, in the form of the published articles, ranging back many decades, condemned to literally the trash pile (or recycling center), to be replaced by electronic versions.

One bin contained newer journals - dating back fifteen years, the kinds of journals I would have looked through as a graduate student (when electronic archives were still being built). Another one, however, was filled with older journals, and here was another indication of the deterioration of academic culture: Unlike the newer journals, which were in their original form, these older ones had been bound into hard covers: It had been customary to send of the journals from each year, to get four hard covers. These old collections of journals were actual books, and they had that smell that old books have.

The also contained a book plate each - one of the collest such plates I have seen in a while - that said Ex Libris Strom. Who was Strom?

I opened one, from 1970, and I started skimming through it. I was struck by how much things were different. The lingo was the same, but there were articles in English, German, and French. But even more striking were the images and illustrations used in those days. Today, computer programs have made the visual contents of astronomical journals interchangeable. Forty years ago, it was different.

As an astronomer, I am specialized just as any other scientist, which means that while I can understand the gist of most articles, the details will usually be lost on me. This means that unless things were very obvious, simply looking at any of the images in the particular book did not mean that I actually understood them. And I realized that many of the images in these old astronomical articles possessed a strange minimalist beauty.

The photographs were actual photographs. Forty years ago, astronomers took photographs - on large plates - which had many disadvantages, of course. But forty years ago, astronomers also did not have to create pretty colourized images to wow the public to get the financial crumbs known as grants.

Seeing all this, I decided to take a sampling of these images and photographs and to preserve them. Converting the astronomy into actual art was easy and simple: I scanned the images and simply removed all text or anything that would create too much of a context. Usually, that was just a legend and maybe a few numbers. The graphics themselves for the most part I left untouched. I did move some elements around where I thought it made them look better.

So here it is, the strange and rather beautiful minimalist art of astronomical journals, taken from one particular magazine, using various collections from 1969 and 1970.

to the images

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