Harold E. Edgerton & Matthew Gamber
‘Basic Ingredients of a Complex World’
Kayafas, Boston
28.06.2013 - 10.08.2013
“Not too long ago one took it on faith that the final scientific picture of the world would be beautiful, orderly and simple. As it has continued to be sketched in, we have had a number of surprises. The beauty is there, but not of the expected kind. The order is there, but not the sort to damp down our questions. The simplicity has disappeared.”
- C.P. Snow, scientist and author of The Two Cultures-a lecture cautioning against the growing separation of the sciences from the humanities.
Gallery Kayafas is pleased to present Basic Ingredients of a Complex World, an exhibition featuring the photographic work of Harold E. “Doc” Edgerton, a well-loved member of the MIT faculty, and inventor of stroboscopic lighting, along with and Matthew Gamber, a Boston-based artist and educator whose work draws inspiration from a variety of aesthetics: scientific illustration, op art, and minimalism.
The title of this exhibition is derived from a chapter in a 1963 Time/Life publication, Matter, the inaugural title of the Life Science Library Series, written by Ralph Eugene Lapp, a renowned Manhattan Project physicist. C.P. Snow, a noted scientist and author who served as a consultant editor for the book, was concerned with the effect of science on culture. Snow argued that the general public deserved to engage with science with the same appreciation and level of involvement as one would with literature.
Through a variety of photographic approaches, “Doc” Edgerton and Matthew Gamber experiment with how the medium of photography can inform our perception of the world. Both Edgerton and Gamber illustrate aspects of Snow’s ideal by seeing the potential of everyday objects as an opportunity to illustrate ideas that extend beyond what can be seen with the naked eye.
In this new series, Gamber explores how photography can be both documentary and illusory-a paradox demonstrated through his experimentation with 3D techniques, both analog and digital. Tampering with the image to make it seem truer than it is, Gamber highlights where perceptions can be both true and false simultaneously.