Edgerton
never
thought to reserve the
strobe for purely technical subjects. By the
mid- 1930s, he was
photographing everyday phenomena; tennis players hitting a
serve, golfers swinging at a ball, water
running from a faucet, milk drops hitting
a plate and guns firing. Many journalists,
photographers, scientists, inventors, industrialists and naturalists
have paid tribute to
him for altering the way
we look at the world.
Although he always
saw himself primarily
as a scientist his legacy
survives not only in the
scientific advances he
made - Edgerton died
with nearly 70 patents
to his name - but also
in the extraordinary
aesthetic and abstract
qualities of the images
he produced. For sixty
years he combined
practical and funda-
mental engineering talents and aesthetic sensibility, making “frozen
movement” part of our
modern visual culture.
Art institutions such as
the Museum of Modern
Art in New York and
the Royal Photographic
Society in London,
have been exhibiting Edgerton’s photographs since the late
1930s and his prints
are now in countless
museum
collections
worldwide.
Many journalists, photographers, scientists,
inventors,
industrialists and naturalists
have paid tribute to
him for altering the way
we look at the world
and for controlling and
explaining its unseen
happenings.
Thoughts from Gus Kayafas
on key works by Dr. Harold
Edgerton:
In 1940, the French
diver, Pete Desjardin,
visited Edgerton at MIT’s
new Bauhaus influenced pool. Four years
previously, Desjardin,
a French Jew had won
a gold medal at the
Berlin Olympics. This
multiflash image was
5
taken in total darkness,
so Desjardin had to
perform his dive from
the high board with no
visibility.
The total darkness
was necessary as the
flash strobes were not