Eadweard Muybridge

The story

Muybridge combined landscape photography with the sequential study of movement. His series of animals and human bodies reveal phases that continuous perception cannot easily distinguish. Arranged in plates, the images become instruments of observation as well as visual motifs. Through these devices, the body is studied, classified and staged: photographic analysis is inseparable from the actual conditions in which subjects pose.

Understanding the work

Read the entire plate before isolating a view. Intervals, image order and differences between camera angles construct our understanding of the gesture.

Key works and series

Animal Locomotion; sequences of horses in motion.

Sources & further exploration

• MoMA — Eadweard J. Muybridge ↗