One of the first books to be produced with the photographic technologies developed in the mid-19th century was Anna Atkins’s “British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions,” brought out in parts between 1841 and 1853. A cyanotype is produced by placing a specimen on specially treated paper and exposing it to light: the light turns the exposed paper blue and leaves a white image of the specimen. Cyanotypes can be quite beautiful, but Atkins was a scientist, not an artist, and her interest was in creating detailed reproductions of her subject matter for scientific purposes. Photography let her do this more easily than drawing, and so – for the benefit of science – she was a photographer.

Piotr Naskrecki, the entomologist whose photographs are on display in “Vital Variety: A Visual Celebration of Invertebrate Biodiversity” at the American Museum of Natural History, is another in a long tradition of scientists who use a camera to advance their work. Like the algae memorialized in Atkins’s delicate cyanotypes, the invertebrates in his color photographs can be viewed with pleasure by people not terribly interested in the name or social habits of this bug or that snail. On the other hand, the beauty of the images draws us into the science; it make us question how such creatures came to be, what ecological purposes they may serve, and – with the tutoring of Mr. Naskrecki and the museum – what has to be done to guarantee their survival.

One of the least complex pictures is that of the “Malagasy Millipede”; it looks like one of Constantine Brancusi’s radically simplified forms, or maybe a greatly enlarged coffee bean. We see a brown oval, darker on the bottom, lighter on top, and segmented like a football. The form rests on what seems to be the top of a mound covered with short tufts of grass, and is seen against a brown background too out of focus to have any recognizable shapes. It does not look like a millipede because it is curled up, and what we see is its hard overlapping body armor. This invertebrate could have been designed at the Bauhaus, but sleek as it is, it “scavenges bits of dead plants and animals from the forest floor, breaking them down and excreting nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous in forms that other organisms can use.”

The “Velvet Mites” also come from Madagascar. The two in the picture are an exquisite red, their squarish bodies looking like masses of Mark Rothko color that just happen to have eight legs attached to help them get around. Their vivid red is set off against a mottled background of pink and gray sand and pale green plant forms. As mites, they are tiny creatures, just millimeters across, but whereas Anna Atkins’s cyanotypes could only reproduce her material at life-size, the technology at Mr. Naskrecki’s disposal lets him enlarge his subjects enormously. His high-resolution digital Nikons and Canons with their powerful macro lenses give us access to things not ordinarily visible to the naked eye. There is something approaching the voyeuristic about this, not salacious of course, but a sense of intruding on nature at a scale not previously possible, of mysteries being at last revealed.

Two other photographs struck me as being particularly beautiful, the “Horseshoe Crab” and the “Land Snail.” The horseshoe crab is listed as native to the eastern United States, and as a child I became familiar with them on the beach down the road from the summerhouse my family had in Barrington, R.I. As soon as I saw Mr. Naskrecki’s picture, I smelled the salt sea air. By moving his camera in close, he presents the crab’s shell as a monumental structure, maybe a gun emplacement meant to guard the shore from whatever danger might be approaching from the ocean we see in the background. The overall contour is helmet like (with two attractive grooves on top), and the texture seems more metallic than organic. This is a very primitive creature, really a living fossil, but at the same time there is something futuristic about it. It is one of the invertebrate shapes that end up as armament in science-fiction movies, where mechanized insects of one sort or another turn out to be the lethal weapons of tomorrow.

The “Land Snail” of Guinea is the most elegant image in “Vital Variety.” The snail is a celadon figure set on the stalk of a plant of the same pale green, and very dramatic against a plain black background. The poised curve of its neck, the graduated swell of its body, the slightly comic perfect “V” of its antennae, make for a very satisfying invertebrate. It is one of the odd things about an exhibition of this sort that we are attracted or repelled by these creatures based solely on what they look like, as if that had some bearing on their character or function in the world. Or as if they had character at all, in the way individual humans have character, which lets them decide as individuals how they will behave.

Mr. Naskrecki is a scientist and shows us pictures that may be beautiful, but are not necessarily pretty. The wall plaque next to “Seed-Gathering Ant At tacking Termite” tells us “Although seemingly overmatched, this ant, photographed in Botswana, will quickly disable the much larger termite by clipping off its antennae and mouth.” Nature has neither our aesthetic or moral sensitivity. The enormous mandibles of the “Unnamed Malagasy King Cricket” make it seem aggressive, the hairs on the “Tiger Beetle” make it look cute, and the concentric striped markings on the head of the “Hover Fly” make it appear fashionable, although it is certainly unaware of its chic.

Anna Atkins was one of a circle that included Henry Fox Talbot, Sir John Heschel, Humphrey Davy, and Thomas Wedgwood, among others, the scientists responsible for the development of photography in England. Geoffrey Batchen points out in his book “Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography” that they could never decide if the photographer created a work of art, or if it was merely nature replicating itself. The ants and beetles, anemones and crabs in Piotr Naskrecki’s exhibition of invertebrates remind us the question is still open.

“Vital Variety: A Visual Celebration of Invertebrate Biodiversity” at the American Museum of Natural History indefinitely (Central Park West at 79th Street, 212-769-5100).