Bullet Through Plexiglas Possibly 1962 - 1981

Harold Edgerton made this gelatin silver print, Bullet Through Plexiglas, sometime in the twentieth century. I’m thinking about Edgerton setting up the shot. Did he have any idea how spectacular the result would be? I can imagine him tinkering, adjusting, waiting, a bit like how I approach a canvas. Except, instead of paint, there’s a bullet, plexiglas, and a camera to capture it all in mid-air! It’s all about capturing a fleeting moment, like a painter trying to catch the essence of light. See how the bullet pierces through the plexiglas, shattering it into fragments, the whole event frozen in monochrome. The light, the shadow, the texture. This image could easily hang alongside photorealist painters like Richter or even Catherine Murphy, who makes meticulous paintings that are all about the surface and the real. We’re all wrestling with the same problem, really. How do we capture life, freeze it, understand it, before it slips away?