Laue photographs of alite (tricalcium silicate) included in the 1951 ICA exhibition Growth and Form. From Jeffery, J. W. (1952) Acta Cryst. 5, 26-35.The Crystal Structure of Tricalcium Silicate

Looking for crystallographic images from the 1950s

Kevin Lotery is a project researcher working with exhibition organizers from the Tate and elsewhere on the potential reconstruction of Growth and Form, an exhibition mounted by British artist Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) in 1951.

One goal of the original exhibition was to bring together some of the most cutting-edge image technologies then available and examine them on aesthetic grounds (electron micrographs, photomicrographs, X-ray diffraction patterns, etc.). Images were gathered from various different scientific disciplines, and some of the most prominent images in the exhibition were from crystallography (often from particular scientists - such as J. W. Jeffery, Kathleen Lonsdale, C. H. Carlisle, L. Heller, I. M. Dawson and V. Vand - or departments that Hamilton visited personally).

Kevin is now in the process of trying to locate repositories of similar images at various universities and institutions in the UK. He is looking, therefore, for high-resolution images or original negatives/prints of images from around this period.

He is based in London and can be reached via the information below.

Some interesting links:

• Richard Hamilton: Guardian obituary
• Richard Hamilton: Daily Telegraph obituary
• Class notes on the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Growth and Form exhibition
• Wikipedia entry for D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
• Sketching the Universe: Artists' Responses to D'Arcy Thompson
• Read On Growth and Form online