Apr 14, 2017
Joseph Breitenbach - Fragrance of a Rose, 1945. In the 1940s, photographer Josef Breitenbach and botanist René Devaux managed to take photographs of the molecules of odours. French botanist came to the conclusion that smell is composed of minute particles of matter. Being matter it is capable of being photographed. Breitenbach’s method is secret, but he went so far as to say it involves suspending the object above a dish of mercury. The particles of matter that make up the characteristic odour of the object then diffuse themselves into a monomolecular layer one ten-millionth of an inch thick. In photographs all smells resemble bluish-white smoke but have different shapes.
