Eadweard James Muybridge was born in England in 1830. By the 1860's he was in America and learning photography from Carlton E. Watkins, a famous landscape and survey photographer. He became proficient as he photographed hundred of scenes for railroad companies during their great expansion years. His skills became known and he was an ardent recorder of the beauties of Yosemite and other areas of natural beauty.

In 1872 he began the work for which he is most well known. He went to work for Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University, and became involved in the training of Stanford's trotters. Stanford is reputed to have made a bet with two of his business associates that, at a full gallop, a racehorse lifted all four legs off the ground at the same time. The wet plate photographic process took several seconds for an exposure at that time but through the insistence and support of Stanford, Muybridge finally achieved the resultant photographs in June of 1878. that did indeed, show all four hoofs off the ground.

Thus began his transition into what was widely viewed as scientific motion investigation using a camera. In 1887 Muybridge completed the publication, "Freeze Frame," which explores the famous photographs of animal and human locomotion that Muybridge made at the University of Pennsylvania between 1884 and 1887. Muybridge used up to 36 lenses with 12 to 24 cameras, placed at 30-, 60-, and 90-degree angles to his subjects and structured the grid as a backdrop to give a measured appearance to his efforts. Muybridge himself supported the notion that he was approaching his efforts with a scientific perspective and discipline and most viewers have accepted them as reliable scientific studies of movement. This was true for the next hundred years.

In a close examination of his work, the Smithsonian Institution, which holds many of his plates, has concluded that Muybridge the artist, was at work to a greater degree than Muybridge the scientist. There is evidence that the images were manipulated in the darkroom to achieve the final effects rather than a straight reproduction of the event as it actually happened.

Eadweard Muybridge did not realize the success he hoped for in his production of the movement studies. He returned to England where he died in 1904.

Medium : 1 photomechanical print : collotype

Created/Published : 1887

Creator : Eadweard Muybridge, photographer, 1830-1904

Housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

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Product #: cph3c16616