Untitled (Blurred bike in air) c. 1930

This photograph shows a blurred bike in mid-air, its origins and creation remain a mystery. The sepia tone lends an antique quality, but it’s the motion that really grabs me. That blur isn’t just a technical glitch; it’s the feeling of being in motion, or maybe the feeling of being stunned by motion. The bike itself becomes a kind of vortex, a dark shape against the pale sky, while a man in a suit stands to the left, seemingly witnessing the event. He’s outside of the churn of the movement, he's an observer, and we are too. It’s like something Eadweard Muybridge would have created, if Muybridge had a sense of humor. Like his, this is a scientific process applied to an ultimately unknowable subject. The photograph feels as though it has captured something which escapes the fixed parameters of logic, instead becoming something more elusive, and all the more affecting for it.