Ever wondered what the future of photography might hold? It’s notoriously tricky to pre-empt technological advances but we might get an idea by looking at where we’ve been, where we are, and what we can’t yet photograph—however audacious the expectation that we should be able to might seem. In that spirit, here is the past, present, and future of photography in the weirdest cameras we could find.

10. Camera obscura

The camera obscura was the world’s first camera—first recorded in China in the 4th century BC. Simple yet ingenious, it consisted of a darkened room or box with a small hole or lens in the front. As light passed through the hole into the room or box, it left an inverted image of the outside world on the surface at the back. The image was inverted because light travels in straight lines; it’s easy to understand: imagine someone sitting for a photo in front of a camera obscura, with straight lines (the light) passing from the top of their head and the soles of their feet through the pinhole in the box to the surface at the back. If the hole was as big as the object, the light could travel in parallel lines. But because the hole is so small, the lines each take a diagonal route to pass through it (one slanting down, the other slanting up) so by the time they get to the back of the box, the top line is at the bottom and the bottom line is at the top. As light does the same from every single point on the object, the whole image gets inverted.

Unfortunately, there are no surviving photos from fourth-century China because the photographic process came later. In those days, camera obscura was mostly used for safely observing eclipses. It only displayed an image; it couldn’t print it—although cave paintings may have been traced over camera obscura-type images. 

Although there was once said to be a photo of Jesus, the tabloid source was murky on the facts. Some also think the Shroud of Turin, which shows a likeness of Jesus, is a photo from camera obscura. The oldest known photograph, however, was taken much later—in 1826 or 1827—though it did, coincidentally, involve “bitumen of Judea” as a coating for the photographic plate. Taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, it shows his  “View from the Window at Le Gras,” the estate he lived on. His so-called “heliography” technique marked the start of modern photography. Niépce also worked closely with Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in creating the daguerreotype process, reducing exposure time from eight hours to just three to fifteen minutes. This breakthrough, together with the French government’s acquisition of its patent in 1839, brought photography into the mainstream.

9. George R. Lawrence’s “mammoth camera”

The world’s largest camera was built in 1900. About the size of a car, its purpose was simple: To capture an entire train in a single shot. It was commissioned by the Chicago & Alton Railway to showcase the “handsomest train in the world” in all its glory: their “Alton Limited” steam engine with its eight passenger cars. At the turn of the century, this was unprecedented. Photography was still new, and there was no way to take an image so big—not without compromising on detail.

The so-called “mammoth camera,” designed by George R. Lawrence, was therefore a marvel of its time, capable of holding an 8-by-4.5-foot image. Lined with heavy black canvas and light-proofed with 40 gallons of glue, it featured an intricate bellows system and innovative plate holder to minimize friction with the massive glass plate, as well as to facilitate ease of handling. On the day of the photo, the camera was delivered by freight car and horse-drawn van to the Brighton Park shooting location. There, it took fifteen men to set up. But the image itself took only two and a half minutes of exposure to capture.

Nowadays there’s a digital equivalent—and it’s pointed at the stars. Also roughly the size of a car, the LSST Camera—the world’s largest digital camera—is set to be installed at the Rubin Observatory in Chile at the end of 2024. Remarkably, its record-breaking 1.57-meter lens contains 189 sensors with more pixels each than the iPhone 13 camera. In total, the LSST has 3.2 gigapixels, which means it’s capable of taking images with a resolution high enough to show a golf ball from 24 kilometers away. Every night, it’s expected to capture 15 terabytes of data, helping scientists study the nature of dark matter and galaxy formation.

8. Zenit Photosniper

The Zenit Photosniper was one of many “gun cameras” made for military use. And by “gun camera,” we don’t mean a gun-mounted camera (or even a camera-mounted gun); we mean a camera shaped like a gun.

Initially developed by the Soviet Union for reconnaissance during World War Two, the Photosniper was designed to leverage snipers’ steady-handedness for the capture of critical intel. One model, the Photosniper FS-2, which featured a wooden rifle stock and reflex viewfinder for high-precision, long-distance shots, later became available to civilians.

Not all gun cameras were rifle-shaped, though. There was also the DORYU 2-16, which looked like a pistol and was designed for use by police, and the Rokuoh-Sha Type 89, which looked like a machine gun. This was produced by Konishoruko (Konica) for the Japanese Air Force, and was designed to be mounted to planes—hooked up to the weapons trigger to evaluate trainee pilots’ accuracy. Instead of firing bullets, the gun took a photo of where the pilot was shooting.

7. DARPA’s mantis eye

In 2013, with funding from DARPA, researchers from the University of Illinois came up with a digital camera based on the multi-lens eyes of arthropods—specifically praying mantises and dragonflies. Earlier designs, they say, had limited resolutions more comparable to the eyesight of a fire ant or bark beetle. Featuring an array of tiny focusing lenses and detectors, the camera boasts an exceptionally wide field of view that researchers say is “nearly infinite.” It also has minimal optical aberrations, all of which makes it virtually unparalleled among modern digital cameras. It even resembles an insect’s eye, with its curved, elastic electronics and microlenses. 

You might be wondering what DARPA plans to do (or has already done) with this design. Well, it isn’t clear. But there has been talk in the past of practically undetectable, mosquito-sized assassin drones. It seems an obvious application for the military. Less sinister, though, would be its use in micro airborne vehicles (MAVs) for disaster relief applications, where a multifaceted insect-eye camera would help navigate collapsed, smoky buildings in the search for survivors.

6. OmniVision OV6948

Heralded by Guinness World Records as the smallest commercially available image sensor, the tiny OmniVision OV6948 is a giant leap forward for medical imaging. Measuring 0.575 mm by 0.575 mm, it can be fitted to devices as narrow as a millimeter to help minimize discomfort and recovery time. Plus, the sensor’s low-power backside illumination does away with the need for potentially too-hot additional light sources, which further avoids any discomfort. Its resolution of 200 x 200 pixels is good enough for capturing images of some of the tiniest body parts, so it’ll be invaluable to a wide range of medical fields, including neurology, cardiology, and urology.

Furthermore, because it’s relatively cheap to make, it addresses a growing demand for disposable endoscopes amid concerns over cross-contamination.

5. Panono

Equipped with 36 lenses, each with a quarter-inch 108-megapixel sensor, the grapefruit-sized Panono offers the kind of panorama George R. Lawrence could only dream of: one that captures every angle of a scene. In case you missed the specs there, that’s 36 individual lenses, each with 108 megapixels, which is the megapixellage of a high-end smartphone camera. It gives users an expansive, high-resolution 360-degree image.

It was originally conceived as a thesis project. Thanks to crowd-sourcing, however, the German-engineered Panono rocketed from concept to market in record time. And, for all its technical sophistication, the camera—designed to be held on a stick or thrown in the air like a ball—is activated with a single button push, while its status is communicated by an LED ring. Similarly straightforward, the Panono’s single micro USB port serves as both an accessory connector and charging point. Even the app is optional, although it does enhance shooting, processing, and sharing the photos. 

4. Paragraphica

Reflecting our diminishing interest in the outside world, Paragraphica is (probably) the first ever camera without a lens or aperture of any kind. The place where it would usually be is instead fitted with an extraterrestrial-looking, purely decorative 3D-printed spirograph inspired by the star-nosed mole.

Uniquely, Paragraphica takes photos (or rather, creates images) by combining GPS positioning and artificial intelligence. Creator Bjørn Karmann explains how it uses “contextual data” to generate an image: first, it pinpoints the user’s location and surroundings, then it adds in environmental conditions such as weather and time. With this information, it can, fairly convincingly with AI, generate an image of what the user sees in front of him—except in the bizarro style characteristic of AIs like DALL-E. 

Pointless? Yes. But it’s only a prototype; it’s not on the market just yet. There is something appealing about it, though. Powered by a Raspberry Pi 4, it has several user-friendly controls, including three dials to fine-tune input data and AI output settings. For those interested, there’s also a virtual version online.

3. Touch Sight

Contrary to what you might expect, photography isn’t out of bounds for the blind. Historically, they’ve used their other senses as a guide for where to point—for example the smell of the sea, the sound of voices, or the feel of an unfamiliar object. Now, though, technology makes it easier. 

Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader comes pre-installed on iOS devices and can be used to make the camera more accessible—not only by saying aloud which buttons are which but also how many faces are in the shot, and by guiding the hand for panoramas. 

That’s nothing compared to Samsung’s Touch Sight, though, which is a camera designed specifically for the blind. Instead of the usual LCD screen, it features a groundbreaking Braille display—a flexible, embossable surface that represents photos in 3D. Another feature is to record three seconds of ambient sound as an auditory reference for each photo—which is crucial for organizing images. Unlike cameras for the sighted, the Touch Sight is designed to be held in front of the forehead, positioning the lens there like a third eye, and this is where users will also feel the photo they’ve snapped. Inspired by practices at the Beit Ha’iver (Center for the Blind) in Israel, this leverages blind people’s naturally heightened auditory and spatial awareness to help stabilize and aim the camera.

2. Flexible camera

Invisibility cloaks, whereby cameras and screens are used to display what’s behind an object on the front of it, would be easier with flexible cameras. We’d be able to wrap them around objects or make them into clothing. This isn’t necessarily what Columbia University’s Shree K. Nayar had in mind, but it’s probably the use to which his thin, bendable sheet camera will be put. This innovative concept can be adapted to various shapes and surfaces to shoot images that normal cameras cannot.

Crucially, its flexible lens array (made of an elastic material) is responsive, changing optical properties as the sheet bends to ensure high-quality images across a range of deformations. If the lenses were fixed, there would be gaps in the field of view when the lens sheet was bent.

Although it’s just a concept for now, Nayar and his team envision the technology as a low-cost, rollable sheet. 

Needless to say, one use they have in mind is surveillance, with the sheet allowing photography from otherwise impossible locations—literally, blanket surveillance. They also have the somewhat less sinister idea of a low-cost credit card-sized camera that changes the field of view when it’s flexed.

1. Quantum camera and holography

With all the cameras we already have and the novel cameras listed above, what could be the final frontier? What can’t we take photos of yet? One answer to this is objects in pitch darkness. Enter the quantum camera, which as the name suggests, relies on the quirks of quantum physics to encode information about an object into light particles that haven’t touched it. Invented in China, it could significantly benefit the study of delicate, light-sensitive materials, including in the body. It’s early days yet, but the concept is sound.

Another concept for the future of photography is synthetic wavelength holography. It’s based on interferometry, a technique for accurately measuring astronomical and microscopic phenomena. Similar to taking photos of objects light hasn’t touched, this basically allows us to take photos around corners (without a long stick). The concept involves firing laser beams with slightly differing wavelengths past obstructions to illuminate objects hidden from view. The reflected wavelengths are then captured and superimposed, creating an interference pattern—a kind of blueprint—showing the location and details of the object in question, with astonishing (and terrifying) precision and speed. It’s able to do this by requiring only two exposures, each lasting just 23 milliseconds, to scan a nearly hemispheric field of view. 

Applications are likely to include examining human tissues obscured by bones or detecting tiny imperfections in machinery. It could also be used in self-driving vehicles to help navigate blind corners and fog. Probably, artificial intelligence will be used to filter out “noise” and enhance captured holograms—paving the way for real-time holographic streaming systems. Needless to say, all of these uses mean there’s plenty of funding. So although it’s still a long way off, the dawn of holography is coming—bringing with it a transformation in how we visualize and interact with the world (and a giant leap beyond Orwell in terms of governments’ surveillance capabilities).

A poet, a painter, a novelist, an inventor, a scientist, a movie director, an actress, a chess master, a rock star, and a business magnate, all enormously successful in their professions and world famous, had something else in common as well: each was a recluse.

Why, we might wonder, could men and women with so much talent, who had earned such acclaim, shun society and choose to live alone? Of course, most people would find such a largely solitary existence undesirable, even unbearable. The ten famous recluses, past and present, on this list, however, embraced solitude, living their lives apart from society, all of them for reasons of their own.

Related: People Famous For Doing Things They Didn’t Do

10 Virgil (70 BC–19 BC)

The Roman poet Virgil is the author of many classic works of literature. However, he is best known, perhaps, for his epic poem The Aeneid, which recounts the Trojan hero Aeneas’s travels throughout the Mediterranean world and the Trojans’ victory over King Latinus. By anyone’s measure, his works, as well as their continuing cultural influence, would be counted as huge successes. So why would the author of such masterpieces decide to become a recluse?

One account of the poet’s life, Master Virgil by J. S. Tunison, suggests that Virgil lived a solitary life in order to enjoy the studious, contemplative life he needed to compose his poetry. Unlike his friend and mentor, the Roman poet Horace, who was approachable, sympathetic, charming, and witty, Virgil, perhaps by nature, was someone whom “only his most intimate friends could approach.” On the rare occasions when he might be seen on the streets, he would flee from even his admirers and their shouted praises. Whereas Horace was a man of the world, Virgil was a man of books who seems to have preferred the solitary activities of reading and writing to the company or adulation of others.^[1]

9 Michelangelo (1475–1564)

Michelangelo is regarded as one of the greatest sculptors and painters of all time. His statues, which include Pieta, David, and Moses, and his paintings, especially those that adorn the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, are famous worldwide. He is also considered a superb architect, having designed such famous buildings, in whole or in part, as the Palazzo Farnese; the Campidoglio, or Capitoline Hill; and St. Peter’s Basilica, among others. Superb accomplishments, indeed, and they have earned him a place in history among the great contributors to art and culture.

Nevertheless, despite such colossal accomplishments, Michelangelo became a recluse in his later years. According to John Addington Symonds’s second volume of The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Michelangelo, recognizing that he was socially awkward, was likely uncomfortable among others. He was skeptical, if not cynical, about supposed admirers, who might flatter him simply to obtain honor by associating themselves with him. He admitted that, at times, he found that even the Pope annoyed and wearied him “by begging too much of [his] company.”

Michelangelo, who himself might have had “a haughty sense of personal dignity,” also admitted that he did not always remember to follow etiquette, donning his hat in the presence of His Holiness or speaking his mind too freely in the presence of visitors of high rank. Michelangelo was a man of strong opinions, especially concerning the arts, and tended to speak freely, even when doing so might offend his social or political superiors. By keeping to himself, he avoided this faux pas and was, at the same time, able to be himself.^[2]

8 Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

As a young woman, Elizabeth Moulton-Barrett lived the good life, although the luxury to which she was accustomed was marred by a controlling father. She admitted he was a very wealthy man. Unfortunately, he was also very possessive, a personality trait that would become more problematic for his daughter a few years later after she fell in love with a fellow poet.

Until the age of 22, she was in excellent health and enjoyed both horseback riding and other outdoor activities. She was studious and “well educated for a girl,” studying Shakespeare, Dante, and both Greek and Latin. Then her family moved to Wimpole Street in central London, where she “became virtually a recluse, having contracted some vague illness that confined [her] to [her] room.” Withdrawn from society, she lived in isolation for a number of years, occupying herself with writing poetry.

In 1838, Seraphim, her first book of poems, was published. The publication of other poems soon followed, and she became one of the more famous poetesses of the day, a status that led to her introduction to her fellow poet, Robert Browning. “I could not believe my lucky stars,” she confessed, “that such a worldly and sophisticated man could love me in this way.”

Despite her father’s wishes to the contrary, the couple was married after a two-year engagement during which they read their work to one another, their love, presumably, deepening. They married in secret and went abroad, to Italy, a week after. Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett-Browning was certain that her father would disinherit her. The couple’s son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, was born in Italy, their adopted country. A recluse by necessity, she became an exile by choice.^[3]

7 H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937)

In 1919, Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft met Sonia Greene at a convention of the National Amateur Press Association. Both were aspiring writers, and they seem to have hit it off at once, as Lovecraft began visiting her soon after.

Their romance must have been inspiring, for Lovecraft’s first short story, “Herbert West—Reanimator,” was published in a 1922 issue of Home Brew, after which the author began submitting stories to Weird Tales regularly. Then, in 1924, the couple married, living in New York. Biographer John L. Steadman characterizes them as an odd couple: “Sonia was glamorous and extroverted, while Lovecraft was reclusive and introverted.” The couple lived separate lives, Lovecraft having moved to “his beloved New England” in 1926, and Sonia filed for divorce two years later.

It may be no coincidence that his stories feature reclusive characters, such as Robert Suydam, the “reclusive scholar living in the Red Hook district of Brooklyn” (“The Horror of Redhook”), and even an extraterrestrial emissary of the Great Old Ones, who “becomes a reclusive scientist” after taking up residence on Earth.^[4]

6 Greta Garbo (1905–1990)

A sensation even among Hollywood glitterati, Greta Garbo acted in films with such other notable stars as Lionel Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Maureen O’Sullivan, Basil Rathbone, Robert Taylor, Charles Boyer, and Melvyn Douglas. As an actress, one might expect her to have been vivacious, outgoing, and at ease in the company of others. The opposite is true, as Ingrid Bergman found out when she sent Garbo flowers and an invitation to join her for Swedish evenings when they could enjoy “meatballs, aquavit, candles and relaxed conversation in their native tongue.” Garbo accepted—three months later, as Bergman was leaving town. Bergman mentioned Garbo’s strange behavior to director George Cukor, a friend of Garbo’s, who laughed, saying, “Of course, Greta wouldn’t have sent the telegram unless she was certain you were leaving.”

Garbo’s career was based, in large part, on her popularity as a talented actress, but, paradoxically, she ignored fan mail, refused to sign autographs, and wouldn’t attend movie premieres. She retired at age 36 after negative reviews for her last film, the 1941 romantic comedy Two-Faced Woman. After that, she lived a reclusive life until her death at age 84.

Had the bad reviews for Two-Faced Woman or something else caused her reclusiveness? Garbo herself may have provided a clue. “I want to be left alone,” she said, and, for more than half a century, she kept mostly to herself, refusing interviews because of “her deep fear of reporters and other strangers and her insistence on guarding her privacy.” Garbo’s reasons also included that she was “able to express myself only through my roles, not in words, and that is why I try to avoid talking to the press.”^[5]

5 Bobby Fischer (1943–2008)

Chess master Bobby Fischer defeated Soviet champion Boris Spassky in 1972. In a sense, the world saw Fischer as an embodiment of the United States and Spassky as the personification of the Soviet Union. When the men clashed on the chessboard, it was as if the countries they represented were also at war. Who would win? Spassky, playing for the Fatherland, or Fischer, playing for Uncle Sam? When Fischer triumphed, he became a hero in the eyes of millions, but his adulation was short lived.

A 1992 rematch with Spassky, played in Yugoslavia, defied U.S. sanctions against the Serbian government. Warned that his playing would constitute a violation of the sanctions, Fischer, who stood to earn $5 million for playing the rematch, spat on the U.S. Department of Treasury’s cease-and-desist order. Later, Fischer “made anti-American statements” following the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

The U.S. government responded by revoking his passport and seeking his return. He was arrested in Japan and jailed for eight months before Iceland “offered him refuge.” By 2005, Fischer was living in Iceland, where “he became the Howard Hughes of chess.” Fischer seems to have become a recluse to avoid the legal consequences he would likely have faced if he had returned to the United States.^[6]

4 George Harrison (1943–2001)

His disenchantment with changes in popular music, the stresses of performance, and his desire to live authentically as himself, rather than as a member of the Beatles, led George Harrison to live a reclusive life after the band broke up in 1970.

He believed that he had gained spiritual wisdom that he wanted to share with the world. He had come to understand himself. “I know what I feel,” he said. His music reflected his views, which were mystical and metaphysical. His son’s birth also seems to have reoriented him. Harrison regarded Dhani, who was born in 1978, as an angel and a treasure who brought joy into his life. He expressed this view through his song “Unknown Delight,” the title alluding to his belief that Dhani showed him joy beyond any he’d ever experienced before and would continue to bring joy that was also unknown.

At the same time that he was finding balance and harmony in his personal life, Harrison was becoming more and more disillusioned by “the state of popular music in the mid-1980s.” He retreated from the music scene, refusing even to perform at the Live Aid concerts with such friends as Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, The Who, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Neil Young, The Beach Boys, and others. During this period of relative withdrawal, he was content to write and record some songs, appear in the film Water, and join a few friends in performing at concerts. Nevertheless, “he took full advantage of his extended sabbatical to escape from the routine pressures of celebrity status.”

In a time of assassinations, Harrison also felt unsafe, even among the admirers who mobbed him and the other members of the Beatles. “The whole magnitude of our fame made me nervous,” he admitted. Just being a Beatle was also wearing on him. He found that fighting “for his place in the band and his songs’ place on its albums was exhausting,” he found. Screaming fans also bothered him, not just during performances, but also for long afterward. “If you had 2 million people screaming at you, I think it would take a long time to stop hearing that in your head. George was not suited to it,” Harrison’s second wife and widow, Olivia, said.^[7]

3 Pete Maravich (1947–1988)

Professional basketball player Pete Maravich learned the basics of his sport from his father, “Press.” Maravich could be found practicing for hours every day, honing his skills at dribbling, passing, and shooting. In North Carolina and South Carolina, he was “The Pistol”; later, as a college player, he’d become known as “Pistol Pete” because of his ability to shoot from the hip. When his father, who’d coached basketball at Clemson University, became the head coach at Louisiana State University, Pete joined the team, establishing every scoring record at LSU. He won, among other honors, the Naismith Award. In 1970, he signed with the Atlanta Hawks, agreeing to play for five years in exchange for $1.9 million. As a player for the New Orleans Jazz, he continued to excel. However, after signing with the Boston Celtics, Maravich was benched in support of Larry Bird. Before the next season, he “announced his early retirement.”

For two years, he was a recluse as he battled depression and alcoholism. Following his conversion to Christianity, he became “determined to use his celebrity to promote his new faith.” Unfortunately, eight years following his retirement and after being named to the NBA Hall of Fame, Maravich collapsed during a pickup basketball game and died of a congenital heart defect.^[8]

2 Paul Allen (1953–2018)

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, won many awards and other honors, but he also lived a reclusive life. The CBS television show 60 Minutes compared his isolated lifestyle to that of another famous recluse, Howard Hughes. According to Allen’s tell-all book Idea Man, he departed Microsoft after he discovered that co-founder Bill Gates was maneuvering to “dilute” his stock. So instead, Allen left the company with a third of the stock at full value, which was worth about $40 billion.

He spent considerable money on his many varied interests, funding his own personal rock band to jam with; purchasing the electric guitar that Jimi Hendrix used at Woodstock for $750,000; “subsidizing” an antenna farm devoted to searching for communications from extraterrestrials; acquiring a Shakespeare portfolio; buying the Seattle Seahawks football team and the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team; investing in the Hollywood studio Dreamworks; buying a yacht, complete with its own submarine, that’s longer than a football field; financing the Allen Institute for Brain Science; and acquiring an expensive collection of “vintage warplanes.”

Allen sued a long list of major companies, including AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Google, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube, for patent infringement, a decision that did not increase his popularity with the Silicon Valley elite. In her 2011 60 Minutes interview with Allen, Leslie Stahl described him as a “recluse,” comparing him to Howard Hughes.

Although Stahl provided no explicit explanation for Allen’s reclusiveness during her interview, the context of the question-and-answer session suggests the sometimes-antagonistic relationship that he had with Gates before and during Allen’s struggle with cancer might have contributed, if not caused, Allen’s preference for social isolation. Allen said that working with Gates could be “like hell. Gates was always pushing him, harder than anyone else, to achieve. Allen and Gates frequently engaged in hours-long shouting matches, and he tired of Gates’s “browbeating” and “personal attacks” and felt as though Gates were marginalizing him.

Allen was in the middle of radiation treatments when he discovered Gates’s stock dilution attempt, prompting him to leave Microsoft. It seems that Allen had finally had enough of the mercurial and abusive Gates, and, although they continued to be friends, Allen kept Gates and most other people at a distance. He preferred to tend to his hobbies and other personal interests, many of which involved only himself or a small group of other people.^[9]

1 Thomas Ligotti (1953– )

Thomas Ligotti, who insists on being called a horror writer, developed “a lifelong panic-anxiety disorder” at age 17 when he discovered “the monstrous nature of everything.” He related to the work of such writers as Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allan Poe, among others. He realized his view of the world was not the only one based on the idea expressed in Poe’s “Ligeia,” that “horror [is] the soul of the plot.”

In an interview (conducted by e-mail), Ligotti sheds some light on the darkness of his fiction and his own reclusiveness. His muse, he said, is “pain,” but “hatred and hurt” also move him to write when his emotional state does not forbid him from doing so. (He struggles with “bipolar depression,” and a bout with irritable bowel syndrome resulting in “intestinal agony” took him to the emergency room.) Writing horror stories seems to provide catharsis, relieving some of his pain and stress.

Ligotti’s other comments in the interview suggest the reasons for his social isolation. “I couldn’t possibly write something that would reflect the true depths of my aversion to everything that exists.” His idea of a perfect world is one in which “everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego” and nothing besides food, shelter, and clothing” would be needed. Ligotti admits that he is “completely detached from anything, including myself and anyone around me” and that “doing anything just seems plain stupid, which in my opinion it ultimately is.”^[10]

Nowadays we take colors for granted, but historically they’ve been hard to come by. Pigment-makers have long gone to great lengths to find new hues, and many paints have pretty weird origins. Even today we’re looking to broaden our palette. Meanwhile, we’re exploring entirely new approaches to paint-making that don’t involve pigment at all.

From our distant past to our not-too-distant future, here are 10 of the weirdest paints we could find—listed in chronological order.

10. Han Purple

Purple has long been associated with luxury, not least because of its rarity in nature. Tyrian (or Phoenician) purple—painstakingly extracted from sea snails boiled for days in lead vats—was so heavily restricted to the elites of ancient Rome that even the word purple became synonymous with the emperor. Hence the saying “donning the purple” for becoming the ruler of Rome. It wasn’t until 1856 that a chemist finally stumbled (by accident) upon a synthetic alternative, which according to the fashion of the time he called ‘mauve’. Immediately, it was seized upon by the rich and famous, by Empress Eugénie in France and by Queen Victoria in Britain.

Purple was similarly exalted in the East. Han purple was no less synonymous with nobility in ancient China than Tyrian purple in ancient Rome. But this Chinese purple was a pigment, not a dye, and it had a far less variable hue. It is thought to have been created as early as 800 BC, but the most famous examples of its use date back to around 220 BC when it was used to paint the Terracotta Army and murals in the tomb of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang at Xi’an.

After that, it disappears from the historical record entirely. And it wasn’t until the 1990s that scientists synthesized a new batch, the first in almost 2000 years. The process to make the copper barium silicate pigment was so intricate, though, that they couldn’t believe it was discovered by accident; surely the Chinese had been taught. For one thing, it involved the grinding of precise quantities of various materials. And for another, it required heating to between 900 and 1,100 degrees Celsius.

But it differed substantially enough from Egyptian blue to rule out cross-cultural knowledge-sharing. Perhaps, since it contains barium, Han purple was a by-product of the glass-making process—discovered by Taoist alchemists trying to synthesize white jade. This would certainly explain its appeal to the immortality-obsessed Qin Shi Huang in particular, since white jade was linked to health and longevity.

In any case, there’s more to Han purple than meets the eye. Researchers have found that under certain conditions (temperatures close to absolute zero and magnetic fields higher than 23 tesla, i.e. more than 800,000 times that of Earth’s), the pigment “loses a dimension.” Magnetic waves travel along two-dimensional planes within the material, instead of propagating three-dimensionally. This was a surprising discovery—intriguing for quantum physicists and, according to some others, potentially explaining how our Reptilian overlords shapeshift and how interdimensional travel might work.

9. Carmine Red

The first ever pigment may have been ochre, clay rich in reddish hematite. It was this widely available substance that allowed our prehistoric ancestors to leave behind cave paintings lasting millennia.

It’s still used as a pigment today, but since the Paleolithic we’ve found other sources of red: cinnabar, madder, and vermilion to name a few. A resin lacquer known as sandarac or ‘dragon’s blood’ (which it was literally thought to contain) was also popular in the Middle Ages. It was used for painting anything infernal, whether the fires of Hell, impure blood, demons, or the Devil himself.

Some time later, when the Spanish plundered the New World, a new source of red was discovered. Female cochineals (a type of insect that eats prickly pears) were dried by the Aztecs and Maya and crushed to extract red carminic acid, or carmine—a red more stable and more intense than any that were known in Europe.

Carmine was eagerly lapped up by royalty and artists alike. And it remained in vogue centuries later, when it captivated Vincent van Gogh. In a letter to his brother Theo in 1885, he said he was “very excited by” the color, describing it as “warm and lively like wine.”

Carmine is still in use today, despite its somewhat grisly origins, not just in paint and dyes but in cosmetics, shampoos, and even food. As PETA advises in an article titled “Makeup Enthusiasts: Stop Smearing Dead Bugs on Your Face,” products containing the pigment may list it as “CI 75470,” “cochineal extract,” “crimson lake,” or “natural red 4.”

Despite the popularity of carmine, however, researchers are still on the lookout for “a great all-around red,” since pigments of this color often lack safety or stability. According to those in the business, the next red could be worth billions.

8. Orpiment Orange

Throughout history—particularly in the Levant and Asia right up until the 20th century—volcanic orpiment was a major source of orange pigment. Gathered from sulphurous fumaroles (natural gas vents around active volcanoes), the mineral was heated by fire to turn it from yellow to a flaming orange.

It looks almost golden, which is actually how orpiment got its name—from aurum (Latin for ‘gold’) and pigmentum (for color). For the same reason it captured the attention of alchemists.

Preparing the pigment was an arduous process. After hand-selecting the crystals and manually removing impurities, the mineral was painstakingly ground to a powder. Any layers that wouldn’t come apart had to be twisted and broken by hand. Only then could the powder be chemically separated from the sulfur and heated for use in orange paint.

Suffice it to say, there was a lot of manual handling involved—which was unfortunate given that it was high in deadly arsenic.

7. Mummy Brown

In days gone by, the pulverized parts of ancient cadavers were smeared onto skin and even taken by mouth. By the 16th and 17th centuries, ground up Egyptian mummy flesh, or mumia, was as widely available in European pharmacies as, say, aspirin is today.

According to the “father of empiricism” Sir Francis Bacon, it was good for the “staunching of blood.” And Robert Boyle, one of the founders of modern chemistry, noted it was used to treat bruises. It was also prescribed for headaches, stomach upsets, broken bones, coughs, uterine infections, wounds, hysteria, dysentery, diarrhoea, measles scars, general aches and pains, and pretty much anything else. Mixed with a heady concoction of benzoic, black pitch, and poisonous Ruta graveolens (rue), it was also used to treat epilepsy.

As genuine Egyptian mummy supplies struggled to keep up with demand, dealers began to make fakes—treating the corpses of executed convicts with bitumen and leaving them to dry in the sun. The best candidates for counterfeit mummification were eerily specific: young, virginal maidens and 24-year-old men who died of a violent death but nonetheless remained in one piece.

Fortunately, the practice of eating the dead gradually fell out of favor—not least because of unpleasant side-effects: heart and stomach pain, vomiting, “stinke of the mouth,” and possibly even plague.

But mumia was used as a pigment in paint right up until the 20th century. Also known as ‘mummy brown’, ‘Egyptian brown’, or caput mortuum, it produced a cross between raw and burnt umber. It was too variable for many artists’ tastes, but the Pre-Raphaelites seemed to adore it—despite perhaps not knowing what it was. The English painter Edward Burne-Jones was horrified when he found out. Immediately upon being informed, he rushed to his studio and ceremonially buried his tube of mummy brown in the earth—“according,” hoped the young Rudyard Kipling, who was present, “to the rites of Mizraim and Memphis.”

6. Indian Yellow

Academics have noted the inherent racism of white European artists using paints mined or manufactured by black and Asian colonial slaves to studiously differentiate these “lesser” races from their own—especially when those paints contained cow piss.

Indian yellow, or purree, was popular between the 18th and 19th centuries for recreating browner skin tones. Euphemistically described as “organic” by exporters, it was assumed to be vegetable in origin. And it wasn’t until 1883 that its true origin was exposed. According to the civil servant who traced Indian yellow it to its source (a village in Bihar), it was no more than the urine of cows. Collected by gwalas (milkmen), it was heated over a fire, strained through a cloth, and shaped into balls for drying in the sun.

Once the secret was out, the pigment was ultimately banned. It was dirty, unhygienic, and quite possibly toxic as well. But it was also unhealthy for the cows, since in order to get the right shade of yellow, their diet was restricted to mango leaves.

Nowadays Indian yellow is synthetic.

5. Radium Green

Glow-in-the-dark paint was all the rage in the 1910s and ‘20s, but in those days it was made out of radium. This green-glowing radioactive element was only discovered by Marie Curie in 1898, so it was still pretty new and exciting—not to mention misunderstood. Even Curie carried vials of it in her skirt. She thought it was “beautiful,” she said, and apparently she wasn’t alone.

3,000 times more glowy than uranium and over a million times more radioactive, radium-226 (the most stable isotope) has a half-life of 1,600 years. It’s also extraordinarily rare.

When the application of radium salts was found to shrink tumors in the human body, people embraced the deadly element as a panacea for “radiant health.” It was sold in water, soda, candy, face creams, powders, lotions, and soaps—and was also added to spa baths. It wasn’t until later that people started dying. As The Wall Street Journal reported in 1932 in a story about the steel mogul Eben Byers, “the radium water worked fine until his jaw came off.”

In paint, it was marketed under the brand names Undark, Luna, and Marvelite. Originally intended for military watch dials to help soldiers tell the time in the dark, it soon became fashionable among civilians. Of course, the factory girls who applied the paint to clock and watch dials had no idea of its dangers; they were told it was totally safe. And they thought nothing of sucking their brushes to straighten the bristles, getting the dust in their hair and clothes, and even painting their fingernails and teeth.

Inevitably, they became very ill. One young woman complained of weight-loss, joint pain, and feeling like a tired old woman. The following year, her dentist was dismayed to find her jaw splintering away and was forced to remove it. But the constant bleeding that followed killed her a little while later. Anemia and leukemia became common, and skeletons effectively dissolved. Jaws, hips, ankles, and so on simply crumbled away. Those who worked directly with the paint were even carcinogenic themselves, exhaling deadly radon gas.

But the factories refused to accept any blame until the evidence became irrefutable. Although some of the surviving workers—dubbed the “Radium Girls” by the press—brought lawsuits against the United States Radium Corporation, the company’s lawyers stalled for time in a bid to run down the clock on the statute of limitations. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs could barely walk or talk, let alone work, while living without half of their faces.

Ultimately, the US Radium Corporation was forced to settle for $10,000 to each victim, along with a $400-a-year pension and full medical care for the rest of their short, agonized lives.

4. Singularity Black

The whole point of black is the absorption of all visible light, reflecting nothing to the eye to be seen. So if you’ve “seen” black paint, then either you didn’t really see it or it wasn’t really black.

True black paint has been virtually non-existent until only recently when Surrey NanoSystems introduced Vantablack. This “superblack” uses vertically aligned carbon nanotubes—a billion for every square centimeter—to completely absorb all light. According to its creators, the nanotubes are arranged like “blades of grass … all sticking upward on their ends.” They have also been compared to a field of wheat in which, “instead of the wheat being 3 or 4 feet high, it’s about 1,000 feet tall …. very, very long compared to their diameter.”

Light enters and the photons can’t escape, bouncing around inside until they’re absorbed and dissipated as heat. Even ultraviolet and infrared are captured in this way. When the human eye looks toward Vantablack, there’s nothing whatsoever to be seen. Although the spraypaint version, known as Vantablack S-VIS, has a more random, “spaghetti-like” arrangement of nanotubes and therefore absorbs less light, it’s only infrared that escapes—and that’s invisible anyway.

Painting with Vantablack is basically subtractive. Even the contours of three-dimensional objects are lost; all that’s left is a seemingly two-dimensional silhouette, as though your vision itself has been Photoshopped.

The designer Anish Kapoor was so entranced by the paint that he bought exclusive rights to its use—effectively banning other artists from using it. “It’s the blackest material in the universe after black holes,” he said, incorrectly. Unfortunately all he’s used it for so far is a fairly mediocre men’s watch priced at $90,000. In his defence, though, Vantablack is not so much a paint as a proprietary process relying on Surrey NanoSystems’ equipment. So all he’s really done is contracted the lab for his work.

But Singularity Black is another nanotube paint that anyone can purchase for use. Made under contract for NASA, it actually predates Vantablack. It’s not quite as good, and it’s capable of dissolving through the skin, but at least it’s available to all—at least if you can afford it: $525 buys just enough to coat nine square inches.

3. Burf Pink

This paint name, for the hexadecimal color code 223, 173, 179, was actually devised by AI. The algorithmic neural network also came up with ‘Ghasty Pink’ for 231, 137, 165 and ‘Kold of Tale’ for 222, 120, 174. Besides the pinks, it also dubbed a kind of washed-out teal ‘Stoner Blue’, an ominous blood color ‘Farty Red’, and a buffish tortilla just ‘Turdly’.

The AI in question had been fed a list of 7,700 Sherwin-Williams paint colors in the R, G, B hexadecimal format, tasked with analyzing the data for rules to name colors on its own. You can’t buy ‘Burf Pink’ or any of the others—not yet anyway, not under those wonderful names.

But if it’s pink you’re after, you might want the pinkest pink out there. In response to Anish Kapoor’s Vantablack hoarding, paint-maker Stuart Semple released a new pigment of his own—“The World’s Pinkest Pink”—and specifically banned Kapoor from ever using it. (In an undeniably classy comeback, Kapoor Instagrammed a photo of his middle finger, coated in Semple’s pink pigment, with a caption that read “Up yours #pink”.)

While we’re on the topic, it’s worth noting that some claim pink doesn’t exist. We don’t see it in rainbows, they say, which means no band of wavelengths mix red and violet. This of course would make pink even rarer than black. But others say they’re just talking rubbish, that all colors are inventions of the brain. Still, it’s an interesting factoid nevertheless.

2. Bioluminescent Blue

In 2016, an Australian gallery showcased a number of works that used bioluminescent blue paint. The solution contained the marine bacteria Aliivibrio fischeri, whose natural glow the Hawaiian bobtail squid uses to camouflage its shadow while hunting.

However, the paintings (which included images of a viperfish, the moon, and, for some reason, Donald Trump) were basically painted blind. Since the nutrients on the agar dishes that served as each “canvas” could only support the bacteria for a time, the bioluminescence of colonization had to coincide with the exhibition’s opening. When the solution was being applied, it was effectively like invisible ink.

Unfortunately, these works weren’t promoting new paint so much as a way of testing antibiotics; A. fischeri glow when they’re alive, so a lack of the glow means they’re dead. However, we could see bioluminescent paint becoming more commonplace in the future.

Bioluminescent plankton, for instance, are known to emit a glow when disturbed—hence the blue illumination on some tides. It’s thought these organisms may be co-opted as a low-impact, low-cost way to light up the cities of the future. If so, we may see them on buildings, in lamps, and in streetlights. First, though, researchers will need a way to make them glow without disturbance.

In the meantime, there’s Stuart Semple’s “glowiest glow pigment” Blue Lit—made from “some of the planet’s finest light emitting pigments and rare earth activators,” according to the artist’s website.

1. WallSmart White

This one’s just a concept for now, listed among the likes of “Google Nose” (a nanosensor-based smell-augmentation device), “Energy Belt” (which converts fat into energy to charge a cell phone), and the “Latro Lamp” (an automatic light powered by CO2-consuming algae).

But the WallSmart idea is pretty feasible: Loaded with nanoscale LEDs, it’s a paint that changes color on demand. Once on the walls, it would in theory be controlled by an app—the WallSmart app—as seen in the video above. You could change the colors of your walls for an occasion or set them to match the time of day, your mood, your guests, and so on.

It’s not clear what color they would be by default, or with the system switched off, but white seems an obvious choice.

Nowadays we take colors for granted, but historically they’ve been hard to come by. Pigment-makers have long gone to great lengths to find new hues, and many paints have pretty weird origins. Even today we’re looking to broaden our palette. Meanwhile, we’re exploring entirely new approaches to paint-making that don’t involve pigment at all.

From our distant past to our not-too-distant future, here are 10 of the weirdest paints we could find—listed in chronological order.

This is an encore presentation of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list here!