Anna Von Mertens to Release New Book, “Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt”
Photo of Anna Von Mertens
With the support of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation book grant, Anna Von Mertens has expanded her project first developed at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute into a book that will be released by the MIT Press September 17th. Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt is a recognition and celebration of the woman whose discovery founded modern cosmology and how her practice of attention is relevant to science, art, and our everyday lives.
Three guest essays from novelist Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, astrophysicist João Alves, and art historian Jennifer L. Roberts punctuate Von Mertens's essays examining the revelations and relationships that emerged from Leavitt's commitment to looking, touching on ways we all might see anew. Interwoven with these written pieces is a wealth of imagery: details of artworks Von Mertens made in response to Leavitt's legacy; examples of the glass plate photographs of the night sky Leavitt studied; and historic photos of the unique community of women, now known as the Harvard Computers, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory at the turn of the 20th century. Jennifer L. Roberts created photographs specifically for this project that are a manifestation of close looking, using a macro lens to pull forward the richness of these artistic and archival materials. The interplay of text and image is supported by the intelligent elegance of book designer John Kramer.