Shrimp (shadowgraph)
Photograph
1978 (photographed), 1982 (printed)
1978 (photographed), 1982 (printed)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Harold Edgerton was an electrical engineer and began to take photographs as scientific experiments. In his first, he tried to produce a perfect coronet from a single drop of milk falling into liquid. To do this he invented the stroboscope - a device to produce short bursts of light. This allowed him to take split-second pictures of objects in motion which could not be seen by the human eye, including bullets and hummingbirds in flight, light bulbs shattering, and athletes in action. Some of his photographs had an exposure time of less than 1/10,000 of a second.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Shrimp (shadowgraph) (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | Shadowgraph, C-type print |
| Brief description | Shrimp (shadowgraph), C-print photographed by Harold Edgerton, 1978, printed 1982 |
| Physical description | Photographic image of a shrimp and a long tentacled starfish (micro-environment - micro photography). The shrimp 'glows' red, while the image has an over-all pink/ purple hue. |
| Dimensions |
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| Gallery label | Photo London: Beneath the Surface
Somerset House 20 May - 24 August, 2015
Harold Eugene Edgerton (1903–90)
Marine Organisms, 1978, printed 1982
Edgerton was an electrical engineer and began to take photographs as scientific experiments. For these ‘camera-less’ shadowgraphs, he shone light through fluid, projecting the shadow of a nearly transparent shrimp and other organisms directly onto a light-sensitive photographic surface.
C-prints
Given by the photographer
V&A Museum nos. Ph.234 to 236–1982(20-5-2015) |
| Credit line | Given by the artist. Copyright Harold & Esther Edgerton Foundation, 2002, courtesy of Palm Press, Inc. |
| Object history | Given by the photographer |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | Harold Edgerton was an electrical engineer and began to take photographs as scientific experiments. In his first, he tried to produce a perfect coronet from a single drop of milk falling into liquid. To do this he invented the stroboscope - a device to produce short bursts of light. This allowed him to take split-second pictures of objects in motion which could not be seen by the human eye, including bullets and hummingbirds in flight, light bulbs shattering, and athletes in action. Some of his photographs had an exposure time of less than 1/10,000 of a second. |
| Associated objects | |
| Bibliographic reference | Harold E. Edgerton and James R. Killian, Jr., Flash! : seeing the unseen by ultra high-speed photography, Hale, Cushman & Flint, Boston c1939
Harold E. Edgerton, Electronic Flash Strobe (second edition), The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979
Erla Zwingle, '"Doc" Edgerton - THe Man Who Made Time Stand Still', in: National Geographic, October 1987
Exploring the art and science of stopping time: the life and work of Harold E. Edgerton,MIT Press, Cambridge, MA c1999
After and before : documenting the A-bomb, PPP Editions, 2003 |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | PH.236-1982 |
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| Record created | August 5, 2003 |
| Record URL |
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