"STOPPING TIME – THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF HAROLD EDGERTON" par Estelle JUSSIM & Gus KAYAFAS. Editions Harry N. Abrams, New York. 1987. Imprimé au Japon. Petit in-4, couverture toilée anthracite sous jaquette photo. 168 pages dont 4 dépliantes. Texte en anglais d'Estelle Jussim, avant-propos du photographe, illustré de nombreuses reproductions photographiques, 116 en noir & blanc et 22 en couleurs, in-texte et hors texte, par Harold Edgerton, légendées par Gus Kayafas.

 

"A bullet seen the instant it explodes through an apple; a perfect coronet formed by a milk-drop splash; a golf-swing in a procession of distinct exposures taken milliseconds apart: these photographs - classics of modern art and science - are the work of Harold Edgerton, Institute Professor at MIT and inventor of the modern electronic flash. Edgerton's quest to reveal what the unaided eye cannot see has revolutionized photography. Stopping Time is the first book since Edgerton's best-selling Flash! (1939) devoted entirely to his own extraordinary ultra-high-speed images... ln 1933, as a young electrical engineering instructor at MIT, Edgerton sought a patent for his first invention: a high-powered, repeatable flash unit - the strobe. Over the next fifty-four years, his strobe has been the first to light up ice skaters and rodeo riders in darkened arenas, to record remarkable multiple exposures of athletes in action and birds in flight, to capture rapid machinery at work, to "see" shock waves, and to freeze the passage of bullets (using exposures of one millionth of a second or less). Edgerton was the first to take high-speed color photographs, to pioneer multiflash and microsecond imagery, to make nighttime aerial pictures, to record the split seconds of atomic explosions, and to take detailed photos of hummingbirds and live microscopic sea organisms. Edgerton's inventions made possible the flash units that accompany almost every camera today. His wondrous discoveries have shown people things they were never able to see before, in photographs that are as remarkable for their precision as for their sensational beauty…"

 

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