Gus Solomons Dancing c. 1960

Harold Edgerton made this gelatin silver print, Gus Solomons Dancing, which captures the ephemeral quality of movement. Look at how the dancer’s body is multiplied across the frame, a ghostlike repetition that reminds me of stop-motion animation. I can almost feel the flow of time and energy as his limbs unfurl like a blooming flower. Edgerton was a pioneer of stroboscopic photography; I can only imagine him in his lab, experimenting with light to freeze moments that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. He must have been thinking about how to make the invisible visible, playing with time and space like a sculptor. I imagine Gus Solomons working with Edgerton to produce this image: each adjustment, each gesture, an exchange between the dancer and the photographer. Thinking about the relationship between movement and stillness, fleeting and permanent reminds me of the work of other artists interested in capturing moments in time such as Eadweard Muybridge.