Fireworks Timeline
May 2025
Fireworks have an amazingly interesting history. The spectacle and awe they inspire have led many to build and create ever more complicated and intricate displays over many millennia. The word laboratory was first used to describe a place where new fireworks were developed and tested. Louis XIV spent one-third of Versailles’ yearly budget on a single night of fireworks (equivalent to around $30 million today)! Fireworks have also inspired countless artists, musicians, and photographers throughout history.
202 BC – In ancient Liuyang China, the first firecrackers were bamboo stalks thrown in a fire to ward off evil spirits.
1110 – A large fireworks display created to entertain Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty.
1280s – A Syrian named Hasan al-Rammah wrote of rockets and Chinese-flowers fireworks.
1300s – The Chinese produced colored fireworks.
1379 – Fireworks used during a play for an Italian Bishop. Colored fireworks were unknown to them.
1470 – Tsar Ivan II introduced fireworks to Russia.
1481 – Pope Sixtus IV started the Girandola fireworks display. Fireworks were used in Papal celebrations.
1486 – The first recorded fireworks in England were at the wedding of Henry VII.
1500s – In Japan, fireworks were used in celebrations for Lord Date Masamune of Sendai.
1536 – Vannoccio Biringuccio’s book “De La Pirotechnia,” gave us the terms ‘Roman candle’ and ‘Catherine Wheel.’
1600s – The word ‘Laboratory’ was first used as the place to innovate and create fireworks.
1600s – In the Japanese Edo period, fireworks builders specialized in perfectly spherical fireworks.
1608 – Captain John Smith sets off the first American fireworks display in Jamestown, Virginia.
1613 – William Shakespeare plays often used pyrotechnic effects. A pyrotechnics accident destroyed the original Globe Theatre.
1668 – Louis XIV spent one-third of Versailles’ yearly budget on one night of fireworks (~$30 million today).
1710 – Russians invented green and blue fireworks for Tsar Peter the Great and founded the Russian Academic Pyrotechny.
1720s – Italians created the word ‘Machina’ for temporary edifices used in fireworks displays.
1749 – Georg Friedrich Handel creates “Music for the Royal Fireworks.”
King George II commissioned the music for a public fireworks display in Green Park. This Pyro-musical did not go well because of rain and arguments between the Italian firework's designer Gaetano Ruggieri and the British firemaster Thomas Desaguliers. The
fireworks display turned into a disaster. The fireworks timing with the music was off, set pieces destroyed and the pavilion caught fire.
1770 – Louis XVI’s fireworks created by the Ruggieri Brothers caused a deadly stampede of 3,000 people.
1776 – John Adams hoped Independence Day would be celebrated with ‘bonfires’ and ‘illuminations’ (fireworks).
1777 – On America’s first Fourth of July, the fireworks were only the color orange.
1786 – Claude Louis Berthollet discovered that potassium chlorate oxides resulted in a violet color.
1810 – Claude Ruggieri first used green fire publicly during a fireworks display for Napoleon I’s marriage.
1830s – Italians used metal salts in fireworks to create colors: strontium (red), barium (green), copper (blue), sodium (yellow).
1830 – Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai created prints depicting fireworks.
1935 – Man Ray publishes solarized fireworks photo “Le Bouquet” in the surrealist journal *The Minotaure*.
2023 – In the USA, over 300 million pounds of fireworks are set off, mostly by amateurs — over 1 pound per person.
Using Negative Color
April 2025
This series had an inauspicious start in July 2014. I was sitting on a beach on the Oregon coast; after watching the sunset, people began tightly packing the sand. Then, suddenly, the night erupted—a rocket whizzed by and exploded right over our heads. Everywhere, something exploded. It was amateur hour. Everything was illegal. Few were sober. No one was safe. The beach had transformed into a chaotic, electrifying party that lasted well into the night.
I started shooting with no project in mind. The danger and unpredictability were thrilling. Every year after that, I kept going back, drawn to the strange blend of awe and recklessness, beauty and danger.
One night, ten years later, I went to bed thinking about the dual nature of fireworks—how they can be both dazzling and celebratory, yet also destructive, polluting, and terrifying. Just before 3am, I woke up from a vivid dream, and suddenly everything clicked. Thoughts about fireworks and photography raced through my mind. I had a clear vision of what to do with the images I had been collecting for years.
At 3am, I sat at my computer and inverted the colors of one of the photos, creating a digital color negative.
I was awestruck. The first thought that leaped into my mind was Rorschach tests. I saw so many different things in them. They were ambiguous, yet full of emotional resonance. Still beautiful and joyful—but now also eerie, uncertain, and deeply contemplative. I inverted two dozen more. What emerged were strange, surreal compositions that seemed to blur the line between abstraction and reality.
That one intuitive act transformed the images completely—no other manipulation was needed. I remember staring at the first few inverted photos, captivated by the strange flood of emotions and contradictions they evoked. I went to bed feeling satisfied—only to be met by another rush of vivid dreams that lasted until morning.
That’s when Radiant Ether was born!
Fireworks lead to Science
Feb 2025
While fireworks may seem frivolous today, many do not realize that they played a pivotal role in the early days of scientific discovery following their introduction to Europe in the 1500s. Initially developed for royal entertainment, their dazzling effects sparked curiosity about chemistry, combustion, and engineering. The first recorded use of the word "laboratory" referred to the workshops where firework makers experimented with new formulas and techniques. These early pyrotechnicians refined their understanding of compounds and reactions, laying the groundwork for advancements in both science and engineering. Additionally, the word "machine" originates from the elaborate structures designed by Italian firework builders, which incorporated precisely timed fuses to create intricate, multi-stage firework performances. These innovations contributed to the development of experimental science, inspiring future discoveries in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and mechanics.
Reference: Werrett, Simon. Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History. University of Chicago Press, 359 pages, 2010.
Barbara Kruger & Myanmar
Oct 2023
In early October 2023, I was in the Denver Museum. While there I saw Barbara Kruger's work "Untitled (It's our pleasure to disgust you)". The work is quite moving and powerful. Subconsciously, I'm sure I was channeling Barbara as I worked on my project. Like Barbara Kruger, I combine my own photographs with bold, thought-provoking text. The text I source is from Myanmar resistance fighters, capturing their personal journey from peaceful citizens to active participants in the resistance. These declarative statements are distilled from their full, heart-wrenching writings.
The text is use is often direct, concise, and provocative. The use of lowercase conveys the intimate quality of internal thoughts. It's as if these thoughts are unfiltered emotions rather than carefully crafted statements. These statements challenge viewers to think critically about the world around them, which they do not see.
My work is meant to transcend any particular conflict but to comment on all conflicts around the world. We often forget that the human condition, culture, and politics are more similar than different.
iPhone photo of display at Denver Art museum.
