Gus Solomons Dancing c. 1960

Harold Edgerton made this photograph of Gus Solomons dancing, and what strikes me is how he was thinking about time, not just as a single moment, but as a process unfolding. The dancer's body becomes a blur of motion, a kind of echo of himself. Looking at the image, I'm drawn to the way Edgerton captures the arc of the dancer's arms. They fan out like wings, each hand a ghostly trace of the movement that came before. The black and white tones give it a timeless feel, like an artifact from a future that never arrived. It reminds me of how we try to freeze moments, but life is always in flux. It’s like Muybridge’s motion studies, but it’s also got this strange beauty that reminds me of a Francis Bacon painting, all about capturing the fleeting, messy reality of being in motion. In the end, it's not about pinning down one meaning, but embracing the mystery of movement and change.