Introduction of the artist:

Harold EDGERTON (USA)

Born in 1903, Fremont, Nebraska, USA. Died in 1990, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Selected solo exhibitions: 2010 Seeing the Unseen: Photographs and films by Harold E. Edgerton, Ikon Gallery Off-site, Birmingham, UK / 2010 Faster than the Eye Can See: Photographs by Harold Edgerton, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, USA / 2008 Harold Edgerton: Photographs, Corkin Gallery, Toronto / 1998 In a Flash - Dr. Harold E. Edgerton (1903-1990) & Split-Second Photography, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra / 1987 Stopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton, International Centre of Photography, New York / Selected group exhibitions: 2010 8th Gwangju Biennale, Korea / 2009 A Few Frames: Photography And The Contact Sheet, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York / 1985 18th Sao Paulo Biennial / 1967 Once Invisible, MoMA, New York / 1937 Photography 1839-1937, MoMA, New York.

Introduction of works:

Harold E. Edgerton, Swirls and Eddies of a Tennis Stroke, 1939

Harold E. Edgerton, Pole Vaulter, David Tork, 1964

Harold E. Edgerton, Bullett and Apple c1964

In the 1930s, American scientist and photographer Dr Harold Edgerton invented a high-speed photographic process based on the operation of rapid, stroboscopic instances of light or ‘flash’. It was a catalytic event in history of science, photography and art which revealed aspects of reality and phenomena hitherto invisible to the naked eye.  Like the earliest pioneers of photography, Edgerton’s work contained the elements of magic and prompting disbelief, excitement and wonder similar to that experienced by audiences viewing the first photographs made in the nineteenth century.

Edgerton’s photographic images of athletes, dancers, liquids, birds and bullets were taken at exposures of one millionth of a second, and thereby reveal an “optical unconscious”. They remind us that our perception within time and space is limited by the nature of our sensory organs, with their narrow bands of receptivity, and the physiological processes that comprise our nervous systems and brain activity. A short film of a humming bird is at once beautiful and philosophically arresting, Zen-like, through its scientific revelation. We clearly see the beating of its wings in slow motion, and imagine on the other hand how ponderous we must seem to a humming-bird, even to the point of immobility.