A Photography Blog

I was taking a lovely constitutional around the halls of MIT a few weeks back (and let me tell you, that place is BIG– check it out)…

Anyhoo, I came upon an exhibit showcasing the stroboscopic work of Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton, who was an MIT professor for years. You’ve probably seen these pictures; the strobe allowed Doc to capture very minute moments in time.

But have you see these? These I had not seen.

At first I couldn’t tell what they were. Blobby…  scary.

They were taken by Doc with his Rapatropic camera in 1952. At an atomic test site in Nevada.

Wikipedia tells us more:

The rapatronic camera is a high-speed camera capable of recording a still image with an exposure time as brief as 10 nanoseconds (billionths of a second).

The camera was developed by Harold Edgerton in the 1940s and was first used to photograph the rapidly-changing matter in nuclear explosions within milliseconds of ignition. To overcome the speed limitation of a conventional camera’s mechanical shutter, the rapatronic camera uses two polarizing filters and a Kerr cell.The two filters are mounted with their polarization angles at 90° toeach other, to block all incoming light. The Kerr cell between thefilters, which changes the polarization of light passing through itwhen energized, acts as shutter when it is energized at the right timefor a very short amount of time, allowing the film to be properlyexposed.

For a film-like sequence of high-speed photographs, as used in the photography of nuclear and thermonuclear tests, arrays of up to 12 cameras were deployed, with each camera carefully timed to record a different time frame.

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HOLY KERPLOSION, batman.

Serge Giachetti sent me some of his images from his documentation of the Blackfeet Indian tribe in Montana a few days back, and asked for my support for his grant proposal.

It’s this grant, that promises 50 grand for the best dream assignment. You know the one.

Well, this first image up top knocked my socks off, so I looked at the others. I think there’s some real promise here. Here’s more about the project as Serge sees it going forward:

“Native American youth, like most adolescents, have it rough. But,whereas many kids face problems like how to gain popularity, passchemistry class, and make the football team, Native American teens facean additional and more weighty proposition: how do they hold onto therich culture of their elders and steer clear of the many social illsplaguing reservations? Many of the tribal elders view these as one andthe same question–to live according to the old ways of the tribe is toavoid the many pitfalls of life on the reservation. To them, hope forthe future lies in honoring the past.

I would like to explore and document these themes on my dream photoassignment by putting the youth of the tribe in a sort of visualdialogue with their elders. Culminating with both a book and multimediaproject, I plan to document the daily lives of Native American youth:their adolescent struggle and striving for individuality, as well astheir symbolic participation in old tribal ways. I will juxtapose thesedocumentary style photographs with portraits of tribal elders. In bookform, the elders will appear on opposing pages from the youth as ifthey are watching over them. In multimedia form, a combination of videoand stills will be backed by audio interviews from both the youth andthe elders discussing their hopes for the future of their tribe.”

I love all the roaming horses.

Check out Serge’s project and proposal here, and lend him your vote if you like what you see.