Press Release: 7th December 2006

Left: Cerebral cortex nerve cells, light micrograph C.J Guerin, PhD, MRC Toxiology Unit
Right: Libyan desert, satellite image M-Sat LTD/SPL

Science Photo Library (SPL), the world's leading provider of science images, celebrates its silver anniversary this year. A dip into SPL's collection of more than 250,000 images reveals breathtaking beauty and curious images, which no one could have guessed 25 years ago would bridge the divide between science and art and decorate gallery walls, album covers and even fashion accessories.

Michael Marten who was one of the authors of Worlds Within Worlds, a book exploring different ways to observe the universe, founded Science Photo Library in 1981. When Marten started receiving requests for the intriguing images in the book, he had an idea of setting up Science Photo Library. Marten says: "Worlds was the first popular book in Britain to show the new range of scientific imagery that had been developed since the 1950s, and it showed that science images could be exciting, colourful, even artistic. Scientific images weren't part of most people's visual vocabulary when we started. Nowadays they're used in ads, on newspaper fronts, in pop videos - almost anywhere."

Over the years, SPL has inspired artists and art directors, and the creative usage of SPL images has grown and become more diverse. Photographs from SPL formed an important part of Damien Hirst's exhibition in New York in 2005 when he turned his hand to photorealisim. SPL images have also been used as album cover art in several occasions, perhaps most famously by Chemical Brothers. SPL's Sales and Marketing Director Maria Storey says: "SPL truly bridges the arts science divide. Not only are the images themselves, created by scientific techniques as diverse as immunofluorescence light microscopy or satellite images of the earth from space, works of art. Yet they also further act as inspiration for creators of all sorts, from graphic designer to contemporary artists, generating new and original artworks."