DAY 153

FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS

Eadweard J. Muybridge (1830–1904)

PICTURES THAT MOVE AND MOVING PICTURES

In his efforts to settle a bet made by race-horse owner Leland Stanford, as to whether or not a horse’s hooves simultaneously leave the ground, Eadweard Muybridge created and used a photographic setup that allowed him to capture movements that were imperceptible to the human eye. The photographs ultimately showed an airborne horse with all four hooves off the ground and proved that Stanford was indeed correct. By using a battery of multiple cameras and a special shutter, Muybridge was able to capture motion from start to finish.

Eadweard Muybridge, bust, facing right -frontisp. In Animal Locomotion (Phila., 1888) LC-USZ62-49712; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Muybridge was born in England but made his way to the United States, where he gained fame for his landscape photographs of Yosemite. He gained further notoriety in 1874, when he shot and killed his wife’s lover. Although he was acquitted for “justifiable homicide,” he found it prudent to travel abroad in Central America for a few years, taking pictures for the Union Pacific Railroad (owned by Stanford).

Upon returning to the country, he continued his experiments, notably at the University of Pennsylvania, where he made thousands of images in his studies of the locomotion of humans and animals. The volumes of this work, which showed humans performing a tremendous variety of activities, from walking downstairs to throwing water, are still used today as scientific and artistic reference.

At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Muybridge used his zoopraxiscope (considered the first movie projector) during a series of lectures, making history by showing moving pictures to a paying audience for the first time. —GC