November 24 2005

Text By Catherine Jamieson

The capture of a moment of suspension, often called the "fleeting moment", has been sought by artists and scientists since the time of recorded history. The Greek philosopher Zeno, often connected with this pursuit, created four philosophical paradoxes (Achilles and the Tortoise, The Dichotomy, The Arrow, and The Stadium) which are all concerned with the ideas of motion and stillness and which conclude, variously, that motion is, in fact, impossible.

Though Newton and Leibnitz put these paradoxes to rest with mathematics in the 1700's (which led to the invention of differential calculus) and it's all very complicated and scientific, it seems to boil down to something we photographers know intuitively: motion is simply a series of stills that are stitched together by a clever cosmos. Here we have an echo of Zeno's paradox, a "fleeting moment" captured exquisitely as could only be done with photography.