{"id":9892,"date":"2019-01-05T20:27:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-06T01:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=9892"},"modified":"2019-01-06T10:50:16","modified_gmt":"2019-01-06T15:50:16","slug":"harold-edgerton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/01\/05\/harold-edgerton\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare Photos By Harold \u2018Doc\u2019 Edgerton, Whose Inventions Froze Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beginning in the early 1930s, Harold \u201cDoc\u201d Edgerton\u2019s (1903-1990) invention of the strobe light allowed him to freeze time, offering new insights into motion and how the world works. His first book, \u201cFlash! Seeing the Unseen by Ultra High-Speed Photography,\u201d was published in 1939. \u201cThis whole book,\u201d The New York Times wrote, \u201ccovering the fields of nature, sport and industry, is a compilation of magic and things undreamed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Harold<\/a>
Harold Edgerton, \u201cMilkdrop Coronet,\u201d 1957. \u201cFalling from a pipette, the first drop of milk creates a disc-shaped layer into which the second drop splashes, catapulting the milk into a diadem. This image is the culmination of 25 years of persistent search by Edgerton for aesthetic perfection. The original 8×10-inch negative was inadvertently destroyed at George Eastman House. This print is one of only three known large \u2018C\u2019 prints made from that negative (before 1960).\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHarold E. Edgerton \u2013 Rarities,\u201d at Gallery Kayafas<\/a> in Boston from Dec. 7, 2018, to Jan. 26, 2019, is a small exhibition spanning Edgerton\u2019s career. Arlette Kayafas writes that her husband \u201cGus Kayafas, former student and Edgerton’s printer and photographic editor has selected these images from the archive. Kayafas was recently in \u2018Steidlville\u2019 where he oversaw the production of a new Steidl volume, \u2018Harold Edgerton: Seeing the Unseen,\u2019 published in cooperation with the MIT Museum. Many of the prints in this exhibit are unique, all are quite rare, and a few are the actual prints used for the book reproductions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Harold<\/a>
Harold Edgerton, \u201cWater onto Can,\u201d ca. 1932. \u201cA smooth column of water hits the bottom of an overturned can and transforms itself. The revealed mystery of such simple occurrences fascinated Edgerton and captivated the early audiences to whom he demonstrated the magic of strobe.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Edgerton grew up in Nebraska, where he began experimenting with cameras and lighting. He earned a master\u2019s degree in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge in 1927, joined the faculty, and earned a doctorate degree in 1931. He taught and researched at the school until his retirement in 1968, but continued work at the school laboratories for much of the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn inveterate problem-solver, Edgerton succeeded in photographing phenomena that were too bright or too dim or moved too quickly or too slowly to be captured with traditional photography,\u201d the MIT Museum has said<\/a>. \u201c\u2026The strides that Edgerton made in night aerial photography during World War II were instrumental to the success of the Normandy invasion and, for his contribution to the war effort, Doc was awarded the Medal of Freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Harold<\/a>
Harold Edgerton, \u201cStonehenge with Flares,\u201d 1944. \u201cIlluminated by Edgerton’s 50,000 watt\/second flash in the bay of a night-flying airplane 1500 feet above the ancient monoliths, Stonehenge served as a demonstration to the Allied commanders of the potential for tracking troop movements during World War II. Edgerton was on the ground with his camera braced on a fencepost. This target was remote enough to allow testing of the equipment without arousing unwanted interest.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Edgerton\u2019s stroboscopic flash allowed him to stop time to record a milk-drop splashing, a spinning lawn sprinkler, bullets bursting through an apple and ripping a playing card, flying hummingbirds and bats and luna moths, a golfer swinging a club, a pole vaulter, tumbling circus acrobats, high divers, a human cannonball, a rodeo rider bucked off a horse, a dolphin leaping out of a pool at the New England Aquarium.<\/p>\n

\u201cA .30 caliber bullet, traveling 2,800 feet per second, requires an exposure of less than 1\/1,000,000 of a second,\u201d Gus Kayafas wrote in the 1987 book \u201cStopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton.\u201d In the 1950s, Edgerton photographed the first microseconds of an atomic explosion. \u201cThe fireball was documented in a 1\/100,000,000-of-a-second exposure, taken from seven miles away with a lens 10 feet long.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results were often beautiful and seductively strange. \u201cHow well I remember my excitement on seeing the succession of exposures of a man swinging at a golf ball,\u201d the pioneering Modernist photographer and curator Edward Steichen said. \u201cIt not only opened a new vista from a scientific standpoint, but also a new art form.\u201d Edgerton\u2019s work was included in the very first exhibition of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1937.<\/p>\n

\"Harold<\/a>
Harold Edgerton, \u201cGussie Moran Tennis Serve, Multiflash,\u201d 1949. \u201cEdgerton brought his strobes and other equipment to Longwood to photograph the touring tennis stars. He was given a few minutes with each in an anteroom before they went out for their matches. The outstanding tennis player, Moran tosses the ball into a perfect parabola for a power serve. This unique vintage print was the actual print used to reproduce the plate in \u2018Flash!,\u2019 published in 1954.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Edgertons\u2019s innovations \u201crevolutionized photography, science, military surveillance, Hollywood filmmaking, and the media,\u201d according to the International Center of Photography<\/a> in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last three decades of his life,\u201d the MIT Museum has said, \u201cEdgerton concentrated on sonar and underwater photography, illuminating the depths of the ocean for undersea explorers such as Jacques Cousteau, who dubbed his good friend \u2018Papa Flash.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Harold<\/a>
Harold Edgerton, \u201cCard Shuffle Set-up (miss),\u201d 1940.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cFaster than the eye, but not the flash\u2026 an expert flips the cards from hand to hand,\u00a0controlling their flight with thumb and forefinger, or not\u2026. This print is one of two\u00a0remaining from the 1976 edition of 11.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Harold<\/a>
Harold Edgerton, \u201cGus Solomons, Multiflash,\u201d 1960.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe dancer Gus Solomons, then in his final year at M.I.T., is captured by multiflash\u00a0at 50 exposures per second. Solomons later established a famous dance troupe in Manhattan.\u00a0This is a unique vintage print.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Harold<\/a>
Harold Edgerton, \u201cBaseball Batter, Mutiflash with Overhead Mirror,\u201d 1965.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Although Doc began photographing baseball hitters in 1935, it wasn\u2019t until 30 years later\u00a0that he was able to control the light and the environment so that he could make ultiflash pictures.\u00a0 The entire area was darkened, fenced in with strong netting, the batter draped in velvet to allow delineation of movement in front of him, and balls were pitched to him \u2013 not surprising, most of the photographs were misses or foul balls. Later, an overhead mirror was added which, with typical Edgerton ingenuity, allowed observation and measurement in all 3 dimensions (and time!) simultaneously. Twenty years later, Edgerton and his assistant, Gus Kayafas, were invited to the David Letterman Show<\/a> to make photographs of Letterman as the atter. It took Kayafas several extended conversations with Letterman\u2019s staff to convince them that it would be very difficult for Dave to hit a baseball in near-total darkness and, more importantly, to hit it where it wouldn\u2019t strike the audience. This is a unique, vintage print.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beginning in the early 1930s, Harold \u201cDoc\u201d Edgerton\u2019s (1903-1990) invention of the strobe light allowed him to freeze time, offering new insights into motion and how the world works. His first book, \u201cFlash! Seeing the Unseen by Ultra High-Speed Photography,\u201d was published in 1939. \u201cThis whole book,\u201d The New York Times wrote, \u201ccovering the fields […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[326],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9892"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9917,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892\/revisions\/9917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}