Photography Meets Physics at the Williams Museum of Art
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) recently opened "Photography at the Frontier of Physics and Art," an exhibition that brings together the work of four major photographers— Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton, Berenice Abbott, and Man Ray— who have changed the popular understanding of physics while expanding the creative possibilities of photography.On August 10, at 2 p.m., exhibition curator and Deputy Director/Chief Curator John Stomberg will give a gallery talk highlighting the exhibition. This is a free program and all are invited to attend.
"Photography at the Frontier of Physics and Art" examines the ways in which scientists using photography engage artistic issues, such as composition and color, while art photographers often work to create images of the physical universe that serve as or celebrate scientific research.
In addition to the four photographers, the exhibition features two contemporary scientists— biologist Joan Edwards and astrophysicist Karen Kwitter, both professors at Williams College—whose work is deeply engaged with the photographic representation of physics.
About the Artists
Muybridge started his photographic career on the creative side, making artistic landscapes for sale in his San Francisco gallery. By the turn of the century he had devised a technique to photograph the stages of motion by using a sequential imaging method that led directly to the development of cinema. The American expatriate artist Man Ray created his portfolio of photogravures, "Electricité," as an interpretive scheme for understanding the meaning, rather than the functioning, of electricity.
Abbott turned to photographing representations of physics late in her career. She argued that physicists needed the aid of an artist to fully explain their work and joined a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology that wrote the new standard text book for high school physics in the late 1950s. Edgerton, a brilliant MIT electrical engineer, pioneered the use of strobe lights in understanding the mechanics of motion. Imaging for him became an end in its own right and he produced portfolios of his photography for sale during his lifetime.
