In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement is a rather unique exhibition, being held at  Galleries One & Two at the National Media Museum (NMeM) in Bradford until 2 September 2012, entry to which is free. It is a multi-media exhibition based on pushing the boundaries of photography and science; it explores the fascination with capturing movement through photography, film, television and new media technology and practices. It  is the National Media Museum’s contribution to imove, Legacy Trust UK’s cultural programme for Yorkshire, as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, to create a cultural legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and is funded by Arts Council England.

The exhibition covers two large galleries and is packed with examples of recording movement from simple toys to computer generated representations ranging historically from Victorian times to recently commissioned pieces. The interlacing of videos, photographs, installations and artefacts that explore the quest to capture movement, features archive materials from the National Media Museum and commissioned works by artists Anne-Marie Culhane and Bob Levene, and Quayola and Memo Akten. All of which are thoughtfully curated into a narrative about our fascination with movement and our desire to capture it.

I chose to start on the first floor with Barnet Fair, a new animation by Jo Lawrence which collages many of the elements within the show whilst exploring movement. The entering the gallery it presents a historical foundation starting with the zoetrope, an ancient artefact which creates movement by spinning several images in succession. This process was made famous by Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne Jules Marie’s chronographic studies which,in the 1890’s, were able to capture 40 images per second on celluloid! What follows ranges from panning, blurring, action, frozen, time lapse, slow motion, time ramp and space ramp, universal capture techniques to CGI extrapolations of Quayola and Memo Akten’s multiscreen digital art work that abstracts human movement at the limits of possibility. Cameras and their operators have pre-visualised and produced stunning images of that which our eyes and brain do not register or even guess at. Many of which reveal a visual and often provocative beauty, which is fascinating especially as some of them were made so long ago and others utilise recent technological wizardry.  

The gallery on the second floor opens with stopping time and the use of artifice and goes on to explore time and space throughout the gallery. From Roger Fenton’s Pasha and Bayadère 1858 where the dancers’ hands have been raised up and tied with string to prevent movement during the slow exposure times whilst suggesting a movement frozen by the camera, the multiple exposures of Oscar Rejlander’s juggler to Philippe Halsman and Richard Billingham’s flying cats, the range of iconic images spans almost the entire history of photography. Following this is a section devoted to high speed exposure revealing that which is not registered by the naked eye. Arthur Banfield’s 1903 splash series, predating Harold Edgerton’s famous Milk Drop Coronet by more than fifty years, whose picture of Gus Solomons epitomises athletic energy, poise and strength. Crisp details and blurred distortions, stretched and compressed images complement each other in this setting as photographers have experimented to record movement, pushing the boundaries of technology to reveal more than what we register by ourselves about time and space. A huge ring of tiny cameras captures an object moving through it to create a ”time slice”, where a trigger works all the cameras simultaneously to make a smooth motion picture of a moment frozen in time. 

The exhibition in Gallery 2 culminates in a commissioned piece by Anne-Marie Culhane and Bob Levene called Time Frame. It is a reflection on our views of speed and the connections between body, movement, image and time. Working with world-class sprinter Leon Baptiste, they trained the athlete to slow down his movements whilst continuing to constantly move forward. It is a challenging contemplation on movement, speed and time that frames the rest of the exhibits and challenges the viewer to take the time to go back and look again over both the galleries. It is the sort of exhibition that could be enjoyed on numerous visits, revealing more and more each time, an exciting visual feast it is well worth taking some time over.