Moths belong to the night. We often only see them when light sends them spiraling down to surfaces, where they land and sit still, beaming out messages like antennaed aliens: Greetings from the World of Darkness.

For many, their presence evokes fear; for some, wonder. For Emmet Gowin, who made the diversity of the order Lepidoptera in parts of Latin America a subject of his photography, meeting these visitors was an opportunity to learn something new.

Over 160 million years of evolution, some 200,000 species of moths have developed an array of colors, shapes, sizes and behaviors. The largest moths have wingspans of up to a foot. They are important pollinators and destructive pests.

It took Mr. Gowin, best known for the intimate, black and white images he made of his wife, Edith, about 20 years to make the acquaintance of the nearly 1,300 moths from Panama, Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador that he photographed for his latest book, Mariposas Nocturnas: Moths of Central and South America, A Study in Beauty and Diversity, which will be released on Wednesday. A related exhibit opens at the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York on Thursday.