Dragonfly in flight (frame 25 to 29). Late 20th century silver gelatin print

Dragonfly in flight (frame 25 to 29). 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’.