One of the tiny bits of my job is to help with publicity and marketing. We’ve a big Open Day event coming up, and we need to replace an old banner for our stand. I love doing this sort of thing. It’s a challenge finding an image that most colleagues like and that fits the space requirements and that we can legally use and that does several types of work for us while we’re at the stand.
This time, I think I found a winner. It’s “Orange-lighted squid catching lanternfish” from William Beebe’s 1934 book, Half Mile Down. I love how the squid sits in the space, and I love how the action is simple, surprising, and crafty. From a distance, it’s clear what the main image is. Look closer and it’s so much more. It’s a drawing. The light is odd. Those fish are in big trouble.
William Beebe was an adventurer and public naturalist. He also was a showman and celebrity in American culture of the 1920s and 1930s.
Half Mile Down (1934) is Beebe’s story of his adventures with a diving bell, which he called a “bathysphere,” deep in waters off Bermuda. Between 1930 and 1934 Beebe and crew dove many times, becoming the first people to observe very deep water animals in their natural habitat. Their deepest dive was 3,028 feet (923m). Beebe’s book presents drawings of some of the animals observed through the tiny crystal viewing portal they have in the sphere. He later tried to use his notes to formally describe and name some of the animals that passed in front of his eyes.
I can’t get over how incredibly thrilling and dangerous those dives were. In the cold, dark, quiet of the abyss. Suspended by a cable – no matter how strong, it must have felt very, very fragile – and with limited supplies of air and communication. Face pressed against the glass trying to see anything flying past. No cameras. No second chance. No way to see what’s behind or beyond. These animals just float on the page.
Beebe used the talents of Mrs Else Bostelmann (p. 228) as artist for the colour images in the book.
Making this image work for a banner was tricky. The original figure is presented as a tight rectangle on the page, and there is a particular trick with the light. I applied a feature in Adobe Photoshop that uses a light-touch AI tool to widen the background, especially vertically, so it would work in the dimensions required for the banner: 2100mm high x 868mm wide – odd proportions for an image.
When you see this banner in real life, don’t just think “science and art”. Think of the explorers half a mile down into the deep ocean with their face pressed against the glass trying to make sense of what they see out there suspended in a world utterly foreign to themselves. It’s a joy to use history of science to rediscover that kind of moment.
William Beebe. 1934. Half Mile Down. Harcourt Brace and Company, New York. Published under the auspices of the New York Zoological Society.