Kris Belden-Adams

A Wrinkle in Time: The Distorted Precision of Photo-Finish Photography

A version of this essay appeared in Cabinet magazine, Issue 26, Spring 2007.

Fig. 1 This photo-finish was made in 1944 at Aqueduct Race Track in Jamaica, N.Y..
The top part of this image is an enlargement of the three first-place finishers. Following
close inspection of this photograph by a team of three judges, the purse was split three ways.
Across the bottom of this image is a contact print of every contestant crossing the finish
line. If any of the other race placings are disputed, photo-finish technicians make additional
enlargements. (Courtesy of Don Morehouse, D&S Photo)

The hoof is quicker than the eye. In a close finish, no judge can tell what horse has won. But a camera can
if its properly placed. Heres the latest gadget,
a mechanical eye thatidentifies a winner by a whisker.
- Sportswriter Robert Harron1

A photo-finish does not behave as photographs conventionally do. It depicts a fixed

vertical strip of space (the finish line) over time, using a moving strip of film which travels
inside of a shutter-free camera at the estimated speed of the racing objects (Fig. 1). In this
still image, we see only objects which were moving as they passed a four-inch-thick vertical
strip of space at the finish line.2 The usual expectation that a photograph will reveal spatial
relations at a given instant of time is reversed. Instead, the photo-finish image depicts a fixed
location, the finish line, over elapsed time. This is contrary to the way we are accustomed to
relating to the passage of time, as it is represented in photographs:3
We are programmed to thinking about photographs as representing instants in time. And therefore we
have a horrible time relating to images that portray time itself as one of the dimensions of the final
image. ...Most people dont think of time as the fourth dimension. It just is.4

In the photo-finish, we see an abstraction, a smear of time.5 Yet the image disobeys not
only our expectations of a photographs relationship to time, but the photo-finish also fails
to depict objects as they appear to us with our own vision. Photo-finish images are full of
distortions. Horses legs may disappear, rowing oars often look as if they are made of rubber,
crews are out of synchronicity, and chariot wheels are oval-shaped. What we see is illogical.
How can a chariot with an oval-shaped wheel move at all let alone, at the rate of 55 feet per second?
Given these departures from reality and photographic convention considered, why
are photo-finish images held by the racing industry and the Olympic Games to be more
trustworthy than the human eye at showing race placings? How do we reconcile their
abstract nature with the fact that the images are so reliable that they are legally binding in a

court of law as the only failsafe method to determine the winner of a race and thus, to
determine the fate of gold medals or millions of dollars? How can we have it both ways?
By taking a closer look at the nature of the photo-finish image, and its relationship to
other photographic practices, I wish to argue that the general public possessed (and still
possesses) a nuanced and accommodating understanding of these images relationship to
veristic truth.6 This kind of acceptance of differing degrees of photographic indexicality
frequently is not expressed by theoretical arguments which focus on defining photographys
essence as absolutely indexical of reality or which focus on refuting this claim by arguing
the opposite.7 In this paper, I will argue that the photo-finish is an example of a
photographic practice which is not collapsible into one or the other of these categories. It is
both indexical and abstract (or symbolic in Peirces terms) at the same time. In the photofinish, we can and we do have it both ways. Therefore, this photographic practice
suggests that photography as a whole cannot universally be defined so accurately by any
fixed degrees of indexicality.

The Photo-Finish and Distortion

A photo-finish image is made by a camera with an extremely thin vertical slit. It is
positioned in a booth in the grandstands above the finish line, and the camera is focused on
a four-inch-thick slice of space at the line (Fig. 3).8 A switch is flipped by a photography
technician just before the racing objects reach the finish line. Film begins moving past the
slit, and it is exposed. Racing horses run past the four-inch exposure space at (hopefully) the
pre-calibrated speed of the films movement. Only moving things are recorded on film.
Anything static appears as a streak. An image of movement past the fixed point over time is
recorded from the right to the left.

Fig. 3 Diagram illustrating how a photo-finish or strip camera works. The aperture
is a single vertical slit about .00801-inch wide. Film is moving at their expected speed of 55
feet per second.

The technical name for this photographic process is strip photography. It was
invented in 1937 by Lorenzo Del Riccio of Paramount Studios for use at Bing Crosbys
Del Mar Turf Club the horse track of the rich and famous of Hollywood (Fig. 4). The
basic technology has changed very little in the seven decades since its invention.9
If the film is calibrated to move faster or slower than the subjects, parts of the image
will be distorted. This occurs often in photo-finish images. Quicker objects appear
compressed. Slower ones are elongated (Fig. 7). That is why wheels moving faster than 55
miles per hour (such as the one on the harness-racing chariot in Fig. 8) appear oval-shaped.
Another common distortion in photo-finish images is the appearance of a ghost leg. If a
horse actually steps on the finish line as it passes by, the horses leg will be still and will not
appear on film (Fig. 9).10
Even more pronounced distortions occur in finish photos for sports which involve
more moving parts or limbs. The photo-finish is used to document race finishes in the
sports of cycling, canoeing, motorboating, speed-skating, roller-skating, track events, horseracing, dog-racing and rowing. Rowing crews frequently appear out of synchronicity in
photo-finish images (Fig. 10). However, in the 1968 Olympic finals, teams were rowing in
perfect synchronicity, and had rigid, functional oars. But because the crew and oars were
constantly moving in different directions as the boat passed the camera exposure space at
the finish line, crew members oars appear curved and the crew itself appears to be out of
synch in the resulting photo-finish (Fig. 11).11
Even more distinct examples of photo-finish distortions are apparent in photofinishes from track events. Because runners commonly step on the finish line, photo-finish
images often feature stretched and deformed human legs (Fig. 12). But viewers know that
reality is different from the image they see in a photo-finish. How could any athlete possibly

run with such a deformed leg? Yet more importantly: How can an image like this which is
trusted to give us the accurate placings of runners in an Olympic final race give us ski-shaped feet, Kerteszlike fun-house starting-block photos (Fig. 13-15), rubbery oars and oval-shaped wheels? We know with
our own eyes that the likenesses we see in a photo-finish are not logical, and do not match
what we see and know to be true. They are abstractions. But what makes the photo-finish
trustworthy even in a court of law if what we see is so obviously untruthful to reality?
How can these images enjoy the truth-value of indexicality at all?
Photo-finish images, for all of their wild distortions, do represent the intervals
between objects and the moments when they passed the finish line with absolute fidelity
(Fig. 16). No matter how elongated or compressed an object might appear, the relative
intervals between it and other objects will be recorded with precision within 1/2,000th of a
second.12 Despite any possible simultaneous distortion of racers, the speed of a racing object
will have no bearing on its time of arrival at the finish line because an object cannot appear
on film until the precise moment when it moves past the finish line. No amount of
distortion can make an object reach the finish line (and be exposed on the film) any sooner.
This is why a photo-finish is upheld as absolutely truthful to the reality of a race finish in a
court of law, by the Olympic Games and by numerous racing industries.13 According to Don
Morehouse, who has photographed horse races for 34 years for the New York State Racing
and Wagering Board, despite the fact that patrons have offered him millions of dollars to
alter photo-finish images, he absolutely cannot make a photo-finish lie:
The photo-finish has stood the test of time over the years. You cant get any truer than that.
Ive had guys ask me to fix race results. I tell them to come up and watch me photograph a
race so theyll see for themselves that theres absolutely no way you can cheat this system.14

Therefore, in the photo-finish image, we see a phenomenon described by Roland Barthes:

that a photographs power of authentification can exceed its power of representation.15 A

photo-finish is regarded as failsafe, and as absolutely indexical to one kind of reality but not
another. It is both indexical and symbolic at the same time.

The Photo-Finish and Time

The photo-finish also plays with our conventional expectations of a photographs
relationship to time. While the photo-finish is indeed a still image, it depicts elapsed time.
The photo-finish reveals a static image of a state of becoming, which ended with the
achievement of the moment we see the crossing of the finish line. (This moment has
consequences in later time including lost fortunes or gained glories.) Because time itself is
distended in photo-finishes, these images offer a unique rupture to the logico-temporal order
we have come to expect to see in 90% of photographs.16 This rupture can make some
viewers very uncomfortable. For example, last year The Toronto Stars editors felt compelled
to provide their readers with a lengthy apology for running what they later felt was a
deceptive photo-finish rowing match image from the 2004 Olympic Games:
it wasnt a photo as most of us know photos. Just an image of four British rowers nosing
out four Canadians at the finish line a picture of time created through the miracle of
ScanOVision. But if you look closely, the image isnt real. Oars no longer are
synchronized. And the winning boat seems longer. Thats because the composite image only
shows you how various boat and rower parts appeared as each crossed the finish line.
Goodness, this is complicated. But heres the point. The Star published an artificial
ScanOVision image but told readers it was a photo. Thats a no-no. The Stars policy
manualwarns editors not to use manipulated images, composites, graphics and
montages.17

As The Toronto Stars editors suggest, photo-finishes require viewers to imagine a new
relationship between photography and time, and between truth and abstraction. But instead
of providing readers with an explanation of how the photograph was made and arguing for
its faithful indexicality to the truth of the order of a race finish, editors condemned the image
and apologized to their audience.18

But I wish to suggest that The Toronto Star did not give its readers enough credit or
information. Since its adoption in 1937, horse race-track patrons alone have become very
comfortable with the photo-finishs unique mix of abstraction and reality. Right after the
technology was adopted, race-track patrons commented that they had absolute faith in the
photo-finish:
Lenses do not lie; users of cameras are quite a different and variable factor.
Gridley Adams19
this electric camera has reduced horse-race finishes to a scientific certainty, doing away
with the error of oblique viewing and all other pitfalls. The announcement was greeted with
cheers, the purse was split, the jockey fees were split and the customers were satisfied. Horse
racing is one business-sports enterprise in which the customer cant always be right. If he
were, somebody would go broke a great deal faster than you and I do now. But if we have to
lose our money and it was Damon Runyon who observed laconically that all horse players
must die broke I think it is only right that we lose it in the most painless manner possible.
The Eye in the Sky has eased the pain in the vicinity of the pocket in which you carry your
wallet, for you must admit that the shock of losing isnt nearly so painful when it is quick and
beyond all doubt. Robert Harron20
In officially announcing the use of the photographic system, Mr. Widener [the president of
Miami Jockey Club] declared that he has perfect confidence in the ability of the judges to
place the finish accurately, which opinion is shared by all professional racing men.21

Immediate feedback suggests that racing patrons immediately trusted that this time smear
would reveal an abstraction of actual time which also enjoyed the truth-values of indexicality.
Track-goers have become accustomed to these particular abstractions, and to their distended
representations of time. (It is interesting to note that Charles Sanders Peirces own notion of
the index even leaves the photograph room for contingency, so that it can slip in and out
of the realm of semiosis.22)
Strip-camera technology also can be used to complicate a photographs assumed
relationship to time and space. If moving objects are photographed by a strip camera while
they are moving in opposite directions, the photo-finish camera will record them as if they
were moving in the same direction the direction of the films movement (Fig. 17). And

strangely, the subjects shadows will still appear to be cast in the correct direction. In a
similarly complicated strip photograph taken from the window of a moving car (in which the
camera was calibrated to move the film at the average speed of the car), parked cars will
appear to have believable widths, but a passing car is compressed (Fig. 18). These examples
of non-racetrack use of strip-photography speak to the degree to which the making of a strip
photograph is very much implied in the image itself. You cannot really understand what you
see unless you imagine exactly how it was made and grasp the degree to which that process
was a departure from photographys norm. However, what makes the photo-finish so
interesting is that it almost can pass as a normal photographic image having a normal
relationship to time and space. It appears to show a still image of moving objects. But closer
inspection reveals that this is not the case at all.
One explanation for our tolerance for photographys slippery relationship to
indexicality and photographic conventions may be rooted in the history of photography
itself. Since photographs were invented, they have embodied qualities which violate our
sense of logic by mixing truthful indexicality with abstraction. One of photographys
founding fathers, William Henry Fox Talbot, forthrightly played with photographys
indexicality slippages in Plate XX, Lace, from The Pencil of Nature (Fig. 19), as early as 1844.
The intricate weaving of this lace appears so naturalistic and so real. But Talbot himself tells
us that his only objective was: to exhibit the pattern with accuracy.23 The lace itself was
black.24 Talbots experiment illustrated that photographic truth can only be partial.
Similarly, it might not be that difficult to understand how a photo-finish can simultaneously
be faithfully indexical to the order of race placings, while it might not provide a true
representation of the racers physical appearances.

When Eadweard Muybridge (who himself was a sort of founding-father of the stopaction photo-finish) would later make a series of human and animal locomotion studies
under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania from 1884-1885, he frequently
spliced-in images from other studies to round out a series (Fig. 20).25 About 40% of his
photographs of movement were composed of photographs which were not taken
sequentially.26 The results were said to be too unrepresentative to make images of any
scientific use.27 They were, however, valued as analytic expressions of Muybridges
understanding of motion. (Incidentally, Futurist photographers would later pursue such a
study, but with their own dynamic motivations.28) The work of Talbot and Muybridge
reflected a free play and vacillation between photographic indexicality and abstraction
which has been a part of photography since its beginnings.
In his time writings, or chronophotographs, Etienne-Jules Marey used one
camera to represent movement on a single plate, over time (Fig. 21).29 Because we do not
see movement this way in our everyday lives, our relationship to the image is based on an
understanding of its abstract nature. We are conditioned to interpret blurred images and
repetition as motion in a still image even if moving objects in the actual world do not appear
that way to us. This could be because: movement is change; and our sense of movement is
an abstract idea, according to Martin Aldur.30
Marey especially experimented with movements abstract nature in his
chronophotographs of assistants wearing motion suits (Fig. 22). In these images,
movements of a human form through space are reduced to an abstract language of lines and
dots. Viewers are conditioned to understand Mareys images as abstract images of elapsed
time an understanding which is predicated upon an embrace of the notion that time itself
is an abstract concept.31 Although both Mareys motion studies and the photo-finish

10

represent elapsed time, the depiction of movement in a photo-finish is more complicated

than it is in Mareys extended exposures. Instead, a photo-finish depicts an image of objects
which appear to be stilled, but which were recorded as they moved over elapsed time.
Another example of our increased tolerance for abstraction is our readiness to accept
photography as superior to our own vision. When a photograph gives us something we
cannot see with our own eyes as the photo-finish does viewers often develop a greater
faith in it than in their own vision. But this process of believing in the superiority of a
photographs ability to see was not immediate. When Dr. Harold Edgerton began making
his stroboscopic photographs (a technology which also was born during the 1930s) with a
strobe light which emitted up to ten flashes per second, he established that the speed of
photography was only limited by the speed of light, not shutters.32 By making it possible for
us to picture an impossibly infinitesimal instant of time, Edgerton reproduced realities which
we cannot verify with our own eyesight (Fig. 23).33 Edgertons photographs transcended the
capabilities of our own human vision, producing a condition which, according to Beaumont
Newhall, differed dramatically from observations which had been made by the unaided
human eye.34 This difference at first made viewers distrust instantaneous images, because
viewers could not prove that the images were accurate with their own vision.35 However,
viewers soon suspended their disbelief, and began to put great faith in photographys ability
to make visible what had hitherto been invisible.36 After all, scientific studies in the 1930s
had determined that the human eye could accurately register no more than four images in a
second (compared with todays photo-finish speed of 1/2000th of a second).37 Thus, the
publics expectations of the truthful indexicality of instantaneous photographs were born
partially out of blind faith in the power of Modern technology.

11

In just a short period of time, the earliest photo-finishes also were wholeheartedly
trusted over the power of the human eye. Purses doubled at race tracks the day that photofinish cameras were first put into use.38 The earliest models even fondly were regarded as
surrogate, disembodied human eyes. Camera were given names such as the Eye in the Sky,
the PhotoEye or the Electronic Eyes. They were highly regarded as hyper-vigilant,
hyper-accurate, electronic, unbiased judges.
Athletes particularly trusted the images. Swimmer Nancy Hogshead, who won the
gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle at the Los Angeles Olympics, attested that When you
win a gold medal by a hundredth of a second, youre happy you didnt leave it to error. (Or
to television or video cameras, which still are a staggering 200 times slower than the photofinish camera.39)
Photo-finish images give us many reasons to doubt their truthfulness. Like other
forms of photography which capture images of motion (Fig. 24-25), photo-finishes deform
and contort our racers. But that matters little when the purpose of the image is determining
the order of a race finish with the accuracy of 1/2,000th of a second. They also test our
conceptions of the photographs relationship to time. The entire image represents an elapsed
series of finish-line-crossing moments. What we see is only an abstraction testifying to the
passage of time itself. But these time smudges carry an absolute, legally binding,
indexical precision. Photo-finishes are a case study that proves that a photograph can be
absolutely indexical and also abstract simultaneously. They complicate essentialist claims
that photography has any one fixed relationship to indexicality and instead suggest the
possibility of many.

12

Fig. 2 This photograph is the oldest surviving photo-finish image. It was made by J.C.
Hemment at a horse-racing track in Sheepshead Bay, N.Y., on June 25, 1890 using a singleexposure camera. This image also illustrates a common problem of single-exposure cameras:
missing the finish-line-crossing moment. Ernest Marks of Plainfield, N.J., reportedly made
the first finish-line photographs in 1888. But none of his images survive today. (Buckland, p.
126)

13

Fig. 4 Lorenzo Del Riccio (with moustache) stands with Bing Crosby (in hat) and other
managers of the Del Mar Turf Club next to Del Riccios new photo-finish strip camera. The
camera was first introduced at the opening of the Turf Club in 1937. The same technology is
still used in the racing industry today. (Courtesy of Mac McBride, Del Mar Turf Club)

14

Fig. 5 Analogous Photographic Practices: The photo-finish cameras strip technology

(evident in the highway photograph, second from bottom) is related to the panoramic
camera (top and bottom images) and to the peripheral camera (second from top). All employ
either moving cameras or moving film. (Courtesy of Andrew Davidhazy)

Fig. 6 Analogous Photographic Practices: David Stephenson, Star, No. 906, 1996.
Extended-exposure images such as this photograph of the night-time sky by David
Stephenson are akin to the photo-finish image because both result from a passage of time.

15

Fig. 7 Distortion in photo-finish images. Racing objects which pass the camera at
exactly the pre-calibrated speed of the film will appear undistorted. This is a rare occurrence.
Faster objects will appear compressed while slower objects will appear elongated in the final
image. (Courtesy of Andrew Davidhazy)

Fig. 8 If a chariot is moving faster than the pre-calibrated speed of the film, its wheel will
appear oval-shaped. (See above chart for details.)

16

Fig. 9 The Ghost Leg is a common occurrence in racing photo-finish images. If a

horse steps on the finish line and is still for even a fraction of a moment, the leg will not
appear on film.

17

Fig. 10 In this close-up from the 1968 Olympic Rowing Finals in Mexico, crew
members appear to be out of synchronicity with each other. This is due to the passage of
time as the image was gradually exposed to film. Distortions such as these are more common
in sports which are slower and involve more moving parts. (Bovay, 29)

Fig. 11 A common feature of rowing photo-finish images is what technicians call the
bendy oar (please see Fig. 10 and below). Because oars frequently are moving in
different directions as the boat crosses the finish line, an oar may appear rubbery in the final
photo-finish image. This is only a distortion. (United States Rowing Club brochure, 2000)

18

Fig. 12 Lee Evans wins the 400-meter final in 1968 Olympics in Mexico. (Bovay, 30)

19

Fig. 13 George Silk, Hammer Throw,

U.S. Track Team Olympic Tryouts, 1960

Fig. 14 Unknown, Runners at the Starting

Block (Bovay, 98)

Fig. 15 Kertesz, Distortion No. 114, 1933.

20

Fig. 16 Chart: The Interval-Documenting Truth of Photo-Finish Images:

In spite of any possible simultaneous distortions, the speed of racing objects will have no
bearing on the time in which they arrive at the finish line. An object cannot appear on film
until the precise moment when it moves past the finish line. No amount of distortion can
make an object reach the finish line faster. (Bovay, 47)

Fig. 17 Further Complications Posed by Strip Photography:

If moving objects are photographed by a strip camera while they are moving in opposite
directions, the photo-finish camera will record them as if they were moving in the same
direction. Yet their shadows will still be correct. (Bovay, 38-39)

21

Fig. 18 Strip Photography and the Implications of the Making of an Image:

This image was made by a strip camera mounted in the window of a moving car. The speed
of the film was approximately the same as the speed of the car carrying the camera. Thus,
parked cars which have believable widths, but a passing white car is compressed. In order to
understand a strip photograph, viewers must imagine how it must have been made. The very
act of making a photo-finish or strip photograph is implied by the resulting image.

Fig. 19 William Henry Fox Talbot, Plate XX, Lace, The Pencil of Nature. 1844.

22

Fig. 20 Eadweard Muybridge, Aescending and Descending Stairs, Animal Locomotion Series,
c. 1870. This plate was among the 40% of motion studies in which Muybridge used
non-sequential images.

23

Fig. 21 Etienne-Jules Marey, Movements of a White Horse, 1885-86.

Fig. 22 Etienne-Jules Marey, Chronophotogram of Walker with Assistant J. Demeny in Black

Costume with Lines and Dots, c. 1887.

24

Fig. 23 Dr. Harold Edgerton, Bullet Piercing an Apple/How to Make Applesauce at M.I.T.,
1957.

Fig. 24 Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Car Trip Papa at 80 K.M. an Hour, 1913.

25

Fig. 25 Oval-Shaped Wheels:

Above: Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Car Trip Papa at 80 K.M. an Hour, 1913.
Below: Chariot Wheel, Harness Race, June 29, 1956, Roosevelt Raceway, N.Y.

26

Fig. 26 Picasso Meets the Peripheral Camera: Similar Conceptions of Space? :

Top: Pablo Picasso, The Sailor, 1938.
Above: Andrew Davidhazy, Portrait, c. 1990.
Davidhazys image was produced by peripheral camera, in a manner similar to the way in
which rollout photographs are made in art museums.

27

Robert Harron, Eye in the Sky, Colliers Illustrated Weekly (Sept. 19, 1936): 21. Harron was commenting about
single-exposure photo-finish technology, which preceded the technology I am addressing in this paper. Singleexposure photo-finish images were made by a camera which was positioned at the finish line. The cameras
shutter which captured 136 images each second was triggered as a horse broke a thin thread on the race
track. All too often, the single-exposure photo-finish camera failed to capture the decisive, first-place finish-line
moment. These cameras only were used for first-place finishes, and provided no help in determining any of the
other race placings. To read more about spectators frustrations with single-exposure photo-finishes, please see:
French Lane. Pharosay Is Second; Rain Greets Opening: Use Eye-In-the-Sky in First Race. Chicago Daily
Tribune, June 30, 1936. 17.; Harron, 59.; E. C. Smith, Finish Photos, The Blood Horse (Feb. 22, 1936): 277.
Isobel Crombie, Athol Shmith: Photographer (Melbourne, Australia: National Gallery of Victoria, 1989), 20.; Ralph
Powers, Photography at the Race Track, Photo Technique (June, 1939): 31. A serious problem in most singleexposure photo-finish cameras around 1936 was their use of a horizontal shutter, which exposed film from top
to bottom. The average speed of a racing horse is 55 feet per second. In the time it took for the bottom part of
the film to be exposed at a shutter speed of 135 images per second, a horse could move at least five inches.
Therefore, images taken with a horizontal-shutter camera gave an advantage to the horse at the bottom of the
frame. It did not take long before racing officials and patrons noticed this problem. Some track patrons
creatively found a way to bet on the reliability of the camera itself:
Most of the equipments were extremely crude; and, because of their crudeness and the lack of
engineering ability in original design, the pictures that were produced soon encountered considerable
criticism from the press and the public. In some of the well known eastern tracks, the camera finish
equipment was so poor that the average layman was willing to go back to the bookie, or bettor at the
track, and make a second bet against the cameraman, so that he might cover his losses.
Ibid, 30.
Inventors tried to compensate for the problem by installing new lenses and increasing shutter speeds (to
1/500th of a second) until they finally discovered that vertical shutters fixed the problem permanently. Ibid.
Even after the cameras were corrected, race tracks still had to win over a skeptical public and an even more
disbelieving board of racing-industry officials. Press publicity helped tracks spread the message that the sheer
power of human deductive reasoning allowed inventors to diagnose the issue of the horizontal shutter and to
correct the problem: Upholds Accuracy of Track Camera, The New York Times, Nov. 11, 1936, 31.
Disbelief in the photo-finish had largely been dispelled by the time the strip camera (the technology I address
in this paper, which was invented in 1937 by Lorenzo Del Riccio) was inaugurated at the grand opening of Bing
Crosbys Del Mar Turf Club. Strip camera technology has been the racing industrys standard for about 70
years. It also should be mentioned that even before the 1930s, cameras were in use at race tracks finish lines. It
was Eadweard Muybridge who first suggested that cameras could be helpful in determining race placings. In a
letter published in Nature magazine in May of 1882, Muybridge speculatively suggested in writing that in the
future, no important race should take place without a photo of the finish to determine the winner.
Jean-Pierre Bovay, Le Sens du Temps: Photografie et Perspective de Temps (Bienne, Switz.: Omega, 1988), 12.
In 1888, Ernest Marks of Plainfield, N.J., made the first single-exposure finish line photographs. None survive
today: Gail Buckland, First Photographs: People, Places and Phenomena as Captured for the First Time by the Camera (New
York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1980), 126. The oldest single-exposure race-track photo-finish images
discovered so far were made by J.C. Hemment in 1890 (Fig. 2). Ibid.
2 While photo-finish images might seem to be more accurately described under the definition of cinema
because movement and the elapsing of time are the subject matter of a photo-finish, I am dealing with photofinish images as photographs for the following reasons: 1) they are singular images, 2) photo-finishes are still
images, and 3) photo-finish images cannot represent replayable, reliveable movement. These parameters are
based on the consideration of the definitions of photography and film presented by: Martin Aldur, The
Representation of Movement in Art, Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs (Vol. 23, No. 124, July, 1913): 204-207.
(Aldur believes that photographs can freeze a single image of movement. He also argues that cinema has the
unique ability to represent replayable movement.); Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time.
(Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 9-12. Doane argues that cinema
rematerializes time which has passed. Because the photo-finish cannot rematerialize and replay time, it would
not qualify to be a work of cinema. Christian Metz, Photography and Fetish, October (Vol. 34, Autumn, 1985):
81-90. Metz defines cinema as an engagement of the visual as well as auditory senses in order to create a
stream of temporality where nothing can be kept, nothing stopped. Ibid, 83. His definition then excludes a
single, still, soundless image from being cinema. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An
1

28

Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1994), 4-5. Thompson and Bordwell define cinema as the viewing of
a rapid succession of instantaneous photographs at a rate of at least 16 per second in order to reproduce
movement. Thus, multiple images are a requirement for cinema.
3 Jean-Pierre Bovay estimates that 90% of all photographs behave according to our conventional expectations.
In other words, he claims that 90% of all photographs depict spatial relationships between objects in a frozen
fraction of a second of time. Bovay, 2. I feel obligated to say that I have absolutely no idea how Bovay arrived
at this percentage. He offers no explanation of any scientific study, and he footnotes no sources. For a similar
articulation of the photo-finish images ill fit with our expectations of photography: Anne-Marie Willis, Picturing
Australia: A History of Photography (North Ryde, Australia and London: Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1988),
166.
4 Andrew Davidhazy, Interview by Author and Ongoing E-Mail Consultation, starting March 7, 2005.
For examples of the definition of photography as the capturing of a single fraction of a moment, please see:
Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press,
2002), 12-13.; Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1995), 49, 53.; Richard Allen, Representation, Illusion and the Cinema, Cinema Journal (Vol. 32, No. 2,
Winter, 1993): 30.
5 I have borrowed the phrase smear of time from Davidhazy, Professor in the Imaging and Photographic
Technology department, School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology.
Davidhazy has been dedicated to the academic study and studio practice of strip photography (the basic
technology on which the photo-finish is based) since he was first introduced to the experimental stripphotography images of George Silk, Time magazine photojournalist. Silk used a strip camera to photograph
Olympic Game tryouts in the early 1960s: Davidhazy. Interview by Author and E-Mail Consultation.
To view a selection of Silks Olympic tryout photographs, please see:
The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Going to Extremes: George Silk, Photojournalist. [On-line
exhibition catalog from retrospective, Aug. 12-Nov. 12, 2000], Accessed May 7, 2005. Available at:
http://www.nga.gov.au/Silk/Txt.htm and http://www.nga.gov.au/Silk/Works/zoom/4.htm
Interestingly, the words time smear also have been used to describe lenticular images which also complicate
any preconceived notions that there might be only one way to consider a two-dimensonal images relationship to
time: K. Dutta and S. M. Jaffey, Time Smear Corrected Multiplex Holographic Display of Computerized
Tomography Data. Selected International Society for Optical Engineering Papers on CD-ROM, Vol. 12, Disc 1.
Conference: Stereoscopic Displays and Applications, 1983.
6 This thought also is mentioned briefly in: Joel Snyder and Neil Walsh Allen, Photography, Vision and
Representation, in Thomas Barrow, Shelley Armitage and William E. Tydeman, eds., Reading into Photography:
Selected Essays, 1959-1980 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 61-91.
7 The issue of whether photography is an absolutely truthful transcription of reality has been central to
discussions about photographys essence. Theorists are divided on this issue. The bipolar nature of this
discussion is perhaps rooted in the very purpose of it: creating a definition of photography which speaks for
every manifestation of its practice. Such a project encourages absolutist claims, and equally absolutist
arguments to the contrary. Andre Bazin, for instance, assigns photography a quality of credibility he feels is
absent from other media because the photograph is produced by a machine. Because a photograph involves
almost no human intervention, according to Bazin, it is absolutely indexical to reality: Andre Bazin, What is
Cinema? Volume One (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1967), 13.
This position is refined by film theorists such as Noel Carroll and David Brubaker. The latter acknowledges the
possibility of human intervention, unlike Bazin. But Brubaker claims that images which are made without the
interference of the human hand are indeed truthful to reality: David Brubaker, Andre Bazin on Automatically
Made Images, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Vol. 51, No. 1, Winter, 1993): 59, 63.; Noel Carroll,
Towards an Ontology of the Moving Image, In Cynthia Freeland and Thomas E. Wartenberg, eds., Philosophy
and Film (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). Bazin and Brubaker both argue that photography at
least, if it is not altered by the human hand has an absolute indexical relationship to the real. Thierry De
Duve perhaps best speaks to the viewpoint of the Bazin camp, and to the polarizing nature of discussion about
photographys indexicality: Photography may not become totally abstract, because that would constitute a
denial of its referential ties. Thierry De Duve, Time Exposure and Snapshot: The Photograph as Paradox,
October (Vol. 5, Summer, 1978): 119. Many other theorists (too many to list exhaustively here) have argued
against the notion that absolute indexicality is a component of photographys essence. Roland Barthes, Camera
Lucida (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981).; Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977).

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Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time.; Mary Ann Doane, Temporality, Storage, Legibility: Freud, Marey and
the Cinema, Critical Inquiry (Winter, 1996): 313-343.; Rex Butler and Keith Broadfoot, A Fold in Time: Anne
MacDonald and the Origin of Photography, in Stuart Koop, ed., Value Added Goods: Essays on Contemporary
Photography, Art & Ideas. (Melbourne: Centre for Creative Photography, 2002), 36. Peter Osborne,
Photography in an Expanding Field: Distributive Unity and Dominant Form, Where is the Photograph?
(Brighton: Photoforum and Photoworks, 2003), 47-62. Snyder and Allen specifically use the example of the
photo-finish to disprove arguments about the absolute indexicality inherent in all photographic practices:
Snyder and Allen, 61-91. It also should be noted that Peirce himself argues that the very word indexicality
allowed photographs room to slip in and out of semiosis: Charles Sanders Peirce, Logic as Semiotic: The
Theory of Signs, in Robert E. Innis, ed., Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana
University Press, 1985).
8 An elevated view of the finish line is advantageous because it allows the camera to see any horses which may
be blocked by the horse in the foreground. To read more about experiments with tower heights and the
possibility of suspending the camera on a cable directly over the finish line, please see: French Lane,
Improvements in Arlington Make It Ideal Track: Eye-In-the-Sky and New Odds Board Features. Chicago
Daily Tribune, June 22, 1936, 22.; Arlington Park Opens 30-Day Meet Tomorrow. Chicago Sunday Tribune, June
28, 1936. Section 2, Page 4.; Braven Dyer. The Sports Parade: Column Conductor Finds Bing Crosbys Del
Mar Plant Architectural Gem; Track Ready for Grand Opening. Los Angeles Times, A14. Despite the fact that
the Great Depression caused race tracks to lose money, many chose to cut back on landscaping but did not
hesitate to fork out a staggering $300,000 in 1936 (which is the equivalent of $4,040,467 to us in 2005) for
Harry Days soon-to-be-outdated, single-exposure camera, the Eye in the Sky: In the Wake of the News:
Arlington Park. Chicago Daily Tribune, June 29, 1936. 19.; Roman Soldier to Campaign at Arlington Park.
Chicago Daily Tribune, June 25, 1936, 24. The Inflation Calculator. [On-Line Resource] Accessed May 18,
2005. Available at: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi. This decision paid off, because purses doubled
when cameras were implemented at the most famous American race tracks Santa Anita (Calif.), Narragansett
Park (R.I.), Arlington Park (Chicago, Ill.) and Hawthorne Park (Chicago, Ill.): Harron, 59-60. For instance, in
Santa Anita, the handle the day before the camera was installed was $221,537 ($2,983,709 to us in 2005). The
next day it was $536,000 ($7,218,967 in 2005). So in just a few days, the cameras had paid off their own
expense: Ralph Powers, Photography at the Race Track, Photo Technique (June, 1939): 31-32. Incidentally,
gambling is even more profitable today. In an average weekday, Aqueduct Race Track makes $12 million from
on-site and off-track betting: Don Morehouse. Interview by Author, Tour of Aqueduct Race Track PhotoFinish Booth in Action, and Ongoing Consultation, March 11, 2005 to present.
9 In 1946, Australians Bertram Alston Pearl and Athol Shmith thought to improve upon the Del Ricco camera
by adding a mirror at the opposite side of the track. This allowed tracks to be able to see horses and saddle
numbers which might be blocked. Mirrors are a standing feature of current photo-finish technology.
Australian Photographic Collectors Society. Athol Shmith. [On-line Article] Accessed Feb. 22, 2005.
Available at: http://www.apcs.asn.au/focus.php; Isobel Crombie, Athol Shmith: Photographer (Melbourne,
Australia: National Gallery of Victoria, 1989), 20-21.; Dan Hancock, Amalgamated Photo-Finish Pty. Ltd.
(Australia), Interview by Author via E-mail Correspondence, March 29 April 1, 2005.; Alanna Scanlon,
Australian Racing Museum and Hall of Fame. E-mail Correspondence, March 8-11, 2005.; Michael Shmith. Son
of Photographer/Inventor Athol Shmith. E-mail Correspondence, April 1, 2005.; Oswald Ziegler, ed.,
Australian Photography (Sydney: Ziegler Gotham Publications, 1947), 24-25. The photo-finish strip-camera
technology is related to the panoramic camera (which features a moving shutter) and to the peripheral camera
(in which moving film captures the image of a rotating object). The panoramic camera was invented in 1846 by
Friedrich von Martens (Fig. 5-6): Bovay, 20.; Andrew Davidhazy, A New Spin on Panoramic Photography.
Photo Educator International (Fall, 1992): 10-11. The peripheral camera was in use in the British Museum to make
roll-out images of Classical vase paintings in the 1870s. Andrew Davidhazy, Camera for Conical Peripheral
and Panoramic Photography, Current Developments in Optical Engineering and Commercial Optics (Vol. 1168): 1989.
Very little has been written about the peripheral cameras history. I was not able to reach anyone at the British
Museum who knew anything more than the fact that the museum has employed the technology since the late
19th Century. Tracing the peripheral cameras genealogy is one subject of my further research.
10 Morehouse.
11 The scientific explanations for these distortions are presented in great detail in: Bovay.
12 United States Rowing Club. Digital Timing and Photofinish: What Can you Expect to See? Brochure
Distributed at Regatta 2000 National Championship. 2000.
13 Morehouse.

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14

Ibid.
Barthes, Camera Lucida, 89. Barthess assertion that it is possible for photographs to have a power of
authentification that exceeds their power of representation is also discussed more thoroughly in:
Broadfoot and Butler.
16 Barthes also argues that still images throw off the logico-temporal order and present alternative narratives:
Barthes, Image, Music, Text, 67. Another interpretation of this passage is provided by: Rosalind Krauss,
Reinventing the Medium, Critical Inquiry (Vol. 25, No. 2, Winter, 1999): 297-298.
17 When is a Photo Not a Photo. Toronto Star. Aug. 23, 2004, Section D, Page 3; Aug. 28, 2004. Section H,
Page 6.
18 Although I am aware that in the body of this paper, I am unsympathetic to the The Toronto Star for not taking
the time to explain the photo-finish to its readers, I absolutely understand why editors did not. Newspaper
photographers, photo editors and art directors share a somewhat universal perception that they only should
show viewers the 90% of images (as quantified conveniently by Bovay) which follow the conventional, singleinstant relationship to time. (This is why photo-montages and photo-illustrations are problematic for news
publications. Departures from the norm threaten the perceived, authoritative, supposedly documentary,
voice of a publication of record, and they can appear to be acts of deception perpetrated against readers.
Being deliberately untruthful is, of course, unethical.) For more about news photographys history, please see:
John Faber, Great Moments in News Photography (New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1960). Incidentally,
advertising photography borrowed upon the nearby, documentary presence of news photography to bolster
its own perceived truthfulness: Patricia Johnston, Real Fantasies: Edward Steichens Advertising Photography
(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1997), 42-73. The Toronto Stars decision also
was a practical one. Any modest departures from the photographic norm can produce thousands of phone calls
from confused readers. All of these calls are re-routed to your desk, especially it seems, when you are an hour
away from rock-bottom deadline with the next days issue. Sometimes, it is just easier just to retract the image
as incorrect and suffer the credibility consequences than to bother explaining something like the photo-finish
individually to every single caller.
19 Gridley Adams, Letters to the Sports Editor: Defends Racing Camera, The New York Times, July 11, 1936,
8.
20 Harron, 60.
21 Hialeah Track Will Use Electric Eye Tomorrow. The New York Times, Jan. 31, 1936, 25.
22 Peirce, 1-23. Further discussions of Peirce also appear in: Doane, 93-95.; James Elkins, Problems with
Peirce. [Manuscript of Chapter from Unpublished book, Visual Culture: A Skeptical Reader.]
23 William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), Plate XX.
Incidentally, the very beginning of high-speed photography can be attributed to Talbots 1851 experiments. He
attached a page of the London Times newspaper to a wheel, which was rotated in front of his wet plate camera in
a darkened room. As the wheel rotated, Talbot exposed a few square inches of the newspaper page for about
1/2000th of a second, using spark illumination from Leyden jars. This experiment resulted in a readable image.
24 An analogous mix of abstraction and absolute indexicality is evident in Anna Atkins Cyanotype Impressions
from the 1840s.
25 When California Governor Leland Stanford got into an argument in 1872 over whether all four feet of a
horse are off the ground while it is galloping, Stanford was the one who initially imagined that photographic
instrumentation could be employed to settle the dispute. Eadweard Muybridge, who worked as a surveyor for
the government, was commissioned by Stanford to take photographs of a galloping horse to settle the
argument. Muybridges first attempts to photograph a horse using a single, high-speed exposure proved futile.
He eventually developed a system which used multiple, single-exposure cameras. The shutters were tripped by
threads. In May of 1872, Muybridge began his first attempts to photograph the horse Occident at the Union
Park Race Track in Sacramento, using twelve cameras and an electromagnetic shutter-release system. He was
able to successfully prove that a horse does indeed have all of its feet off the ground at certain points of its
gallop: Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 1992), 134-135.; Robert Bartlett Haas, Muybridge: Man in Motion (Berkeley, Los Angeles and
London: University of California Press, 1976).; Gordon Hendricks, Eadweard Muybridge: The Father of the Motion
Picture (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1975).; Lawrence Kevin MacDonnell, Eadweard Muybridge: The Man
Who Invented the Moving Picture (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1972).; Phillip Prodger, Time
Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (Middlesex, England: Viking
Penguin, 2003).

15

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Muybridge was also the first to suggest that a camera be used to determine the winner of a horse race. For
more about his contribution to the single-exposure photo-finish, please see footnote number one.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 For a basic history of Futurist photography, please see: Giovanni Lista, Futurism and Photography (London:
Merrell Publishers Ltd., 2001).
29 Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).
30 Aldur. 204.
31 To read more about the argument that time itself is an abstraction, please see: Kristen Lippincott, The Story of
Time (London: Merrell Holberton, 1999), 228-229.; Dawn Ades, Art and Time in the Twentieth Century, The
Story of Time. (London: Merrell Holberton, 1999), 202-211.; Marta Braun, Time and Photography, in Jan
Schall, ed., Tempus Fugit: Time Flies. (Kansas City: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2000), 132-143.; Sarah
Cardwell, About Time: Theorizing Adaptation, Temporality and Tense. Literature/Film Quarterly (Vol. 31, No.
2, 2003): 82-92.; Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time.; Umberto Eco, Times. The Story of Time (London:
Merrell Holberton, 1999), 10-15. Eco interestingly argues that the only kind of time that exists is the past. He
bases his argument on the idea that the present has already just become the past, and on the notion that we
have no experience with which we could possibly attest to the existence of the future.; Felipe FernandezArmesto, Time and History, The Story of Time (London: Merrell Holberton, 1999), 246-263
32 Braun, Picturing Time, 135-136.
33 Roger Bruce, ed. Seeing the Unseen: Dr. Harold Edgerton and the Wonders of Strobe Alley. (Rochester, N.Y.: The
Publishing Trust of George Eastman House, 1994).
34 Beaumont Newhall, Photography and the Development of Kinetic Visualization, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes (Vol. 7, 1944): 40.
35 Aaron Scharf, Painting, Photography, and the Image of Movement, Burlington Magazine (Vol. 104, No. 710,
May, 1962), 186, 189.
36 Ibid, 195.
37 Harron, 60.
38 Harron, 60.
39 This degree of slowness is caused by the fact that that movie cameras blink between frames. (On the other
hand, photo-finish cameras constantly expose film.) Todays video footage loses time between frames just as
the early single exposure photo-finish images did. Video cameras are not regarded as reliable by many racing
industries, although different sports have different rules about what constitutes the most trustworthy form of
visual verification. For instance, basketball relies on video while most racing, rowing and track events rely on
photography. Perhaps the most interesting of all sports is baseball which does not use any verification
methods other than the umpires keen human eyesight. Incidentally, the New York Racing Authority employs
video cameras to watch races for possible rule-breaking. While I was observing stewards at the Aqueduct Race
Track in Jamaica, N.Y., on March 18, 2005, two horses were suspected of bumping by the racing stewards.
The three judges re-played footage for about five minutes, reprimanded the jockeys, and then had to let the
matter go. Even after a close review of each individual frame from the video, the group of three stewards was
not able to discern which jockey bumped the other first. This illustrates the problem with relying on video. It
is substantially less precise, even when re-played. No matter how minute the cameras blinking may be, those
small spaces between images do often contain critical information.

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