I'm John Batchew with Anika Burgess. Her book is a history of photography, how we got to having the iPhone take such great pictures of our spaniels. However, there are social details here that are critical. People see things they respond, which is why the question of truth. There's also politics here. Again, Alice Austin, new to me,

thanks to you, Anika. Who was she? She was a photographer in Staten Island. She was an amateur

in the sense that she didn't get paid for her images. She didn't have a studio set up. But I think her approach would

very much be seen as a professional. She photographed everything in her life. She photographed

scenes of her friends and her family and she took detailed records of what she photographed

and how and what lenses she used. And through Alice Austin and I have such an affinity for her and her work

because she took these photographs that feel very new and fresh and because they show her

friendships, they show intimate relations with her with her friends, they show their loyalty,

they're very playful, you know, there's pictures of her and her friends dressing up,

dressing up as men.

And I think it's a really important record to show this aspect of photography

from the 1890s onwards.

There is science afoot here as well.

The accidental discovery by a man named Renkin, you might recognize the

name because we use it as a metric, of x-rays. How did he do it? I mean, Ronkin is, so,

he's a, he's a physicist, he discovers x-rays, he discovers they can be used to create an

impression on a plate and that they can be used to create an impression on a

plate and that they can see through things. And so very quickly, notwithstanding the science behind

it is a mystery and no one was quite sure what x-rays were for quite some time, it becomes

seized upon as a new form of photography. It's actually called a new photography, shadow

photography, Ronkin photography.

It all sort of becomes this idea that, oh, there's a new way of seeing,

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