TEACHING PHOTOGRAPHY: INTERPLAY BETWEEN CHEMICAL KINETICS AND VISUAL ART

Abstract

This paper proposes photography experiments, which appeals to interdisciplinary teaching, where an effort is made to reveal the interactive relationships among two different fields, science and art. Such teaching can follow an interplay between chemistry and visual art establishing a relation between the appearance of a photographic image and the rate of a chemical reaction. The appearance of a photographic image is related to its contrast, which actually expresses the number of gray tones existing between absolute black and absolute white, and the chemical reaction is the reduction of silver halide to metallic silver. This interplay involves the two levels of representing matter: the microscopic and the macroscopic level. The macroscopic level that concerns visual art can be understood in relation to a chemical kinetic effect at microscopic level. Teaching photography within an Art Science frame provides the context for introducing chemical kinetics and studying the factors affecting the rate of a reaction. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.: 2003, 4, 55-66]