Indian Club Demonstration after 1939

Curator: Harold Edgerton’s “Indian Club Demonstration” captures a performer mid-motion, using stroboscopic photography to reveal the trajectory of the clubs. Editor: It’s mesmerizing, almost like a blooming flower rendered in grayscale, but there’s also a haunting quality with the ghostlike figure. Curator: It reflects the burgeoning interest in physical culture at the time, where fitness and athleticism were being codified and promoted as markers of social progress and even moral virtue, especially as a counterpoint to sedentary industrial lifestyles. Editor: Right, and Edgerton was fascinated with capturing movement itself. The clubs’ form, their weight, the performer’s labor—it’s all meticulously recorded through light and chemistry. Curator: Absolutely. He reframes these objects, often gendered and classed, in a way that speaks to a broader societal preoccupation with control. Editor: Seeing the labor and the process reframed certainly offers a different understanding of both the athleticism and the science at play.