Beaverbrook Art Gallery launch exhibit of important photographic works.
Featured are eleven photographs from the Gallery’s permanent collection by Harold “Doc” Edgerton (1903-1990), an electrical engineer, educator, inventor, entrepreneur and explorer, best known as the inventor of ultra-high-speed and stop-action photography.
Edgerton created important and memorable photographs from his development of the electronic stroboscope, which enabled high-speed photography techniques that were applied to scientific uses. Through the creation of innovative photographic equipment and processes, he succeeded in making the invisible visible, photographing phenomena that were too bright or too dim or moved too quickly or too slowly to be captured with traditional photography. Along with their value to industry and science, his photographs possess an aesthetic quality as works of art (his famous “Coronet” milk drop photo was featured in the New York Museum of Modern Art’s first photography exhibition in 1937), and are important to our understanding and appreciation of the history and meaning of photography. When named New England Inventor of the Year in 1982 by the Boston Patent Law Association and Boston Museum of Science, Edgerton’s achievement was encapsulated as follows: “through his marvelous medium, he has captured and revealed new beauty and order in both nature and industry.”
Harold “Doc” Edgerton (1903-1990): Freezing Time | Beaverbrook Art Gallery | May 24 – August 31, 2015
