The technique of laser speckle photography has been developed with the aim of measuring the strain field around the tip of a fast crack. An image processing system to allow automatic point-by-point analysis of a speckle photograph is described. The Young's fringes diffraction pattern, produced by directing a narrow laser beam through the photograph, is digitised and processed by computer. Two algorithms have been developed based on Fourier and Walsh spectral analysis. The system can measure speckle displacements with an accuracy of better than 0.1 μm. A new technique for measuring time-varying displacement fields by multiple exposure of a single photograph is presented. Results are shown from a five-exposure speckle photograph of a cantilever deformed under quasi-static conditions. Extension of the technique to dynamic problems requires a stroboscopic laser light source; one chapter deals with the development of a Q-switched ruby laser for this purpose. Modulation of the cavity losses with a Pockels cell at up to 1 MHz results in a train of short (~50 ns) light pulses at the modulation frequency. Results are presented from the analysis of speckle photographs of cracks in polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) under quasi-static loading. Three different data analysis methods for estimating the stress intensity factor from the displacement field are proposed and evaluated. Preliminary results from dynamic crack propagation studies are described. The dynamic stress intensity factor is estimated from double exposure speckle photographs of fast cracks in PMMA, recorded with the ruby laser in double pulse mode. The application of the techniques of moire and high speed photography to the study of dynamic fracture is also discussed; results are presented from a sequence of moire photographs recorded at 5 x 10<SUP>5</SUP> frames s<SUP>-1</SUP> . Further topics covered in the dissertation include a theoretical analysis of viscoelastic losses as a function of crack velocity, and strain-to-failure measurements on plastic bonded explosives in the Brazilian test using laser speckle photography.