Dragonfly in flight (frame 1 to 5). Late 20th century silver gelatin print

Dragonfly in flight (frame 1 to 5). Late 20th century silver gelatin print, made from original chronophotographe cine-films taken by Étienne-Jules Marey and Lucien Bull between 1891-1902 in their researches on the analysis of animal locomotion.

An assistant of Etienne Jules Marey beginning in 1896, Bull accepted a permanent position at the Marey Institute in 1902. He first worked on stop motion, then dedicated his efforts to the opposite technique, fast-motion, and came up with extremely innovative systems. By combining electrical sparks, a lens with a rotating prism and fast 35mm film, Bull recorded at a rate of 800 images/second, for ‘Flight of a Common Fly’ (1903), then at 2000 images/second (1905). By increasing the frequency of sparks, Bull achieved rates of 15,000 images/second in ‘Firing a Gun’ (1914) and finally reached a rate of one million images/second in the late 1940s with ‘Shockwave’.