.30 Bullet Piercing an Apple
Harold Edgerton
1964
AC 1996.64.7
Harold Edgerton was a professor of electric engineering at MIT who combined scientific laboratory tools with his love of photography. Most famously, he introduced the stroboscope, or strobe, to photography. The strobe slowed down or completely stops the apparent movement of an object, and by synchronizing an electronic stroboscope with a high-speed motion-picture-camera Edgerton was able to expose six thousand to fifteen thousand frames per second. A normal camera only exposes and projects twenty-four frames per second, so when Edgerton's photos are projected, high-speed events appear in extremely slow motion. The resulting images are visually stunning simply because of the unique events they capture, but their careful composition and the artist's attention to color transform scientific studies of motion into works of art.
.30 Bullet Piercing an Apple is a prime example of Edgerton's mélange of science and artistry. By placing the composition off center, Edgerton leads the viewer to interact with the composition as a whole. Neither the bullet, nor the apple, nor the explosion itself is the central focus, but rather Edgerton leads you to focus on the entire moment of explosion. Furthermore, in the photograph Edgerton plays with dimension. The strong and competing vertical and horizontal lines formed by the bullets ground the photograph with a two-dimensional plane, which the apple's stem then breaks out of, reminding the viewer of the fruit's three-dimensionality. Against these strong lines, the motion of the apple's explosion and its chaos are even more pronounced. Edgerton carefully balances the grid of the bullet with the diagonals of the explosion to emphasize the splatters motion versus the apple's stillness.
Edgerton also has an expert understanding of light and color. The composition is organized into light and dark areas, with shadows and highlights adding structure and balance to the piece. The use of light also adds drama to the piece as the bullet speeds from the darkness into the light. Furthermore, his use of light to highlight the apple and bullet contrasts the glossiness of the apple and bullet with the matte white of the explosion. Adding to this contrast is Edgerton's decision to only use white in the explosion while the rest of the colors are bright and saturated. Ultimately, Edgerton uses light and color to accentuate the moment of explosion.
In .30 Bullet Piercing an Apple, Edgerton uses his artistic skill to capture and highlight a moment captured by science. Through his eyes, a simple moment of stillness and movement becomes a balanced composition that plays with our sense of time and dimension. In the end, we are not only left with a unique shot of a normally unperceivable event but also with a piece that stands independently from the process that created it as a work of art.
-Thea
Thea, your formal analysis of this photograph is intriguing. When I look at this image, I usually ponder the mechanical process behind its production, but your post encourages me to think about Edgerton's artistic choices.
ReplyDeleteOne question on my mind: do you think he positioned the apple with the stem towards the viewer primarily to maximize the object's three-dimensionality? If he had rotated it with the stem pointing up--the "normal" profile view of an apple--do you think it would have had a profound impact on the resulting image? I'm wondering if this single adjustment would have tipped the wonderful balance of this photo more towards science than art. The bullet may have punctured the apple's core and severed the stem, making the image an exercise in ballistics analysis rather than art. Then, I wonder whether we as viewers would emphasize with the form of the apple in this alternate position. Might we see it as a body being shot, rather than a vehicle for process of explosion, which seems to be Edgerton's main interest in this image?
I have more questions than answers here. But my main point is that you got me thinking. Thanks!