Eadweard Muybridge: 11 works

'Eadweard Muybridge' reputation as a landscape photographer was established by his fine views of Yosemite, California's national park of outstanding natural scenery. His name today is mainly associated with the photography of movement.'

'Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904); Sylvan Bar, Valley of the Yosemite; 1872; Albumen silver print; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas; P1972.32.1'

'Contending that all four of a horse's feet are off the ground simultaneously at some point while galloping, Stanford hired Muybridge to prove it photographically. Muybridge's first photographs of the horse were poorly exposed and thus inconclusive.'

'This vignette is another example of Muybridge?s acclaimed discovery that four-legged animals do indeed raise all four limbs off the ground when galloping, a theory he was able to prove in his photographic stills of horses in motion.'

'These photographs were often presented with Muybridge?s invented zoopraxiscope, a mechanism that projected the stills as a moving image.'

'These photographs were often presented with Muybridge?s invented zoopraxiscope, a mechanism that projected the stills as a moving image. In this black-and-white sequential image from the famous Animal Locomotion series, Muybridge presents two horizontal rows of 12 images?in descending and ascending size?of a male figure jumping a horse over an obstacle.'

'Muybridge publicized his invention on a European tour in 1881, lecturing and showcasing his publication The Attitudes of Animals in Motion. While in Paris, he met Étienne-Jules Marey, who asked whether the cameras could photograph birds in flight as well, which they could not.'

'Although Muybridge first made his name in 1867 with large-format photographs of Yosemite Valley, he is best known for his pioneering photographic studies of motion, begun in the 1870s, and his early work in motion-picture projection. In the 1880s, his photography of humans and animals in motion, made using 24 cameras arranged horizontally and parallel to the line of motion, was sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania.'

'These photographs were often presented with Muybridge?s invented zoopraxiscope, a mechanism that projected the stills as a moving image.In this black-and-white sequential image from the famous Animal Locomotion series, Muybridge presents three horizontal rows of 12 images showing a nude male figure walking up an incline. Shot from the side, front and back, Muybridge was able to capture the change in the gate of the figure?s walk as well as shifts in muscle movement and the balanced positioning of arms and torso as the man?s legs force the body up the slant.'

'These photographs were often presented with Muybridge?s invented zoopraxiscope, a mechanism that projected the stills as a moving image. In Animal Locomotion, Plate 712, Muybridge captures the sequence of a large dog running to and from the camera as it jumps over a fence.'

'Initially commissioned in 1872 by Leland Stanford to make motion studies of his horse, "Occident", Muybridge later extended that work at the University of Pennsylvania. These studies, in their many forms, occupied him until his death in 1904 at his home in Kingston.'