Eadweard Muybridge
Encyclopedia
Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion
which used multiple cameras to capture motion
, and his zoopraxiscope
, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.
In the 1870s he changed his first name again to Eadweard, to match the spelling of King Edward
shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which was re-erected in Kingston in 1850. His name remained Eadweard Muybridge for the rest of his career. However, his gravestone bears a further variant, Eadweard Maybridge.
He used the pseudonym Helios (Greek god of the sun) on many of his photographs, and also as the name of his studio and his son's middle name.
, England on April 9, 1830. He emigrated to the US, arriving in San Francisco in 1855, where he started a career as a publisher's agent and bookseller. He left San Francisco at the end of the 1850s, and after a stagecoach accident in which he received severe head injuries, returned to England for a few years.
While recuperating back in England, he took up photography
seriously sometime between 1861 and 1866, where he learned the wet-collodion
process.
He reappeared in San Francisco in 1866 and rapidly became successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects, although his business cards also advertised his services for portraiture. His photographs were sold by various photographic entrepreneurs on Montgomery Street (most notably the firm of Bradley
& Rulofson
), San Francisco's main commercial street, during those years.
and San Francisco (many of the Yosemite photographs reproduced the same scenes taken by Carleton Watkins
). Muybridge quickly gained notice for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West, published under his pseudonym Helios. In the summer of 1873 Muybridge was commissioned to photograph the Modoc War
, one of the US Army's expeditions against West Coast Indians.
In 1872, former Governor of California
Leland Stanford
, a businessman and race-horse
owner, had taken a position on a popularly-debated question of the day: whether all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time during the trot. Up until this time, most paintings of horses at full gallop showed the front legs extended forward and the hind legs extended to the rear. Stanford sided with this assertion, called "unsupported transit", and took it upon himself to prove it scientifically. Stanford sought out Muybridge and hired him to settle the question.
In later studies Muybridge used a series of large cameras that used glass plates placed in a line, each one being triggered by a thread as the horse passed. Later a clockwork device was used. The images were copied in the form of silhouettes onto a disc and viewed in a machine called a Zoopraxiscope
. This in fact became an intermediate stage towards motion pictures or cinematography.
In 1877, Muybridge settled Stanford's question with a single photographic negative showing Stanford's Standardbred trotting horse Occident airborne at the trot. This negative was lost, but it survives through woodcuts made at the time. By 1878, spurred on by Stanford to expand the experiment, Muybridge had successfully photographed a horse in fast motion.
Another series of photos taken at the Palo Alto Stock Farm in Stanford, California, is called Sallie Gardner at a Gallop
or The Horse in Motion, and shows that the hooves
do all leave the ground — although not with the legs fully extended forward and back, as contemporary illustrators tended to imagine, but rather at the moment when all the hooves are tucked under the horse as it switches from "pulling" with the front legs to "pushing" with the back legs. This series of photos stands as one of the earliest forms of videography.
Eventually, Muybridge and Stanford had a major falling-out concerning this research on equine locomotion: Stanford published a book The Horse in Motion which gave no credit to Muybridge despite containing his photos and his research, possibly because Muybridge lacked an established reputation in the scientific community. As a result of Muybridge's lack of credit for the work, the Royal Society
withdrew an offer to fund his stop-motion photography. Muybridge subsequently filed a lawsuit against Stanford, and lost.
Muybridge was put on trial for murder. One aspect of his defense was a plea of insanity due to a head injury that Muybridge had sustained following his stagecoach accident. Friends testified that the accident dramatically changed Muybridge's personality from genial and pleasant to unstable and erratic. The jury dismissed the insanity plea, but he was acquitted for "justifiable homicide
". The episode interrupted his horse photography experiment, but not his relationship with Stanford, who paid for his criminal defense.
After the acquittal, Muybridge left the United States for a time to take photographs in Central America, returning in 1877. He had his son, Florado Helios Muybridge (nicknamed "Floddie" by friends), put in an orphanage. Muybridge believed Larkyns to be his son's true father, although as an adult, the son bore a remarkable resemblance to Muybridge. As an adult, Floddie worked as a ranch hand and gardener. In 1944 he was hit by a car in Sacramento
and killed.
Muybridge often travelled back to England, and on March 13, 1882 he lectured at the Royal Institution
in London in front of a sell out audience that included members of the Royal Family
, notably the future King Edward VII. He displayed his photographs on screen and described the motion picture via his zoopraxiscope
.
At the University of Pennsylvania and the local zoo Muybridge used banks of cameras to photograph people and animals to study their movement. The models, either entirely nude or with very little clothing, were photographed in a variety of undertakings, ranging from boxing, to walking down stairs, to throwing water over one another and carrying buckets of water. Between 1883 and 1886 he made a total of 100,000 images, working under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. They were published as 781 plates comprising 20,000 of the photographs in a collection titled Animal Locomotion. Muybridge's work stands near the beginning of the science of biomechanics and the mechanics of athletics.
Recent scholarship has pointed to the influence of Étienne Jules de Marey
on Muybridge's later work. Muybridge visited Marey's studio in France and saw Marey's stop-motion studies before returning to the U.S. to further his own work in the same area. However, whereas Marey's scientific achievements in the realms of cardiology and aerodynamics (as well as pioneering work in photography and chronophotography) are indisputable, Muybridge's efforts were to some degree artistic rather than scientific. As Muybridge himself explained, in some of his published sequences he substituted images where exposures failed, in order to illustrate a representative movement (rather than producing a strictly scientific recording of a particular sequence).
Similar setups of carefully timed multiple cameras are used in modern special effects photography
with the opposite goal of capturing changing camera angles with little or no movement of the subject. This is often dubbed "bullet time
" photography.
At the Chicago 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
, Muybridge gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall, built specially for that purpose in the "Midway Plaisance" arm of the exposition. He used his zoopraxiscope
to show his moving pictures
to a paying public, making the Hall the very first commercial movie theater.
while living at the home of his cousin Catherine Smith, Park View, 2 Liverpool Road. The house has a British Film Institute
commemorative plaque on the outside wall which was unveiled in 2004. Muybridge was cremated and his ashes interred at Woking
in Surrey
.
animator
s often use Muybridge's photos as a reference when drawing their characters.
Since 1991, the company Optical Toys has published Muybridge sequences in the form of movie flipbooks.
Filmmaker Thom Andersen
made a 1974 documentary titled Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer
, describing his life and work.
Composer Philip Glass
's 1982 opera The Photographer
is based on Muybridge's murder trial, with a libretto
including text from the court transcript. A promotional music video featured an excerpt of the opera dramatizing the murder and trial, and included a considerable number of Muybridge images.
The play Studies in Motion: The hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge debuted in 2006, a co-production between Vancouver's Electric Company Theatre and the University of British Columbia Theatre. While blending fiction with fact, it tells the story of Muybridge's obsession with cataloguing animal motion. The production started touring in 2010.
In 2007, Canadian poet Rob Winger
wrote Muybridge's Horse: a poem in three phases, a long poem nominated for the Governor General's Award for Literature, Trillium Book Award
for Poetry, and Ottawa Book Award
. It documented his life and obsessions in a 'poetic-photographic' style. It won the CBC Literary Award for Poetry.
In 1985, the music video
for Larry Gowan's single "(You're A) Strange Animal" prominently featured animation rotoscope
d from Muybridge's work. In 1986, a galloping horse sequence was used in the background of the John Farnham
music video for the song "Pressure Down". In 1993, the rock band U2
made a video of their song "Lemon
" into a tribute to Muybridge's techniques. In 2004, the electronic music group The Crystal Method
made a music video to their song "Born Too Slow" which was based on Muybridge's work, including a man walking in front of a background grid.
Kingston University
in London, UK has a building named in recognition of Muybridge's work as one of Britain's most influential photographers.
In addition, Muybridge's work has influenced:
in Kingston upon Thames
, South West London. The University of Pennsylvania
Archives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
hold a large collection of Muybridge's photographs, equipment, and correspondence.
In 1991, the Addison Gallery of American Art
at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts
hosted a major exhibition of Muybridge's work, which later traveled to other venues. A book-length exhibition catalogue was also published. The Addison Gallery has significant holdings of Muybridge's photographic work.
In 2000–2001, the Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History
presented the exhibition Freeze Frame: Eadweard Muybridge's Photography of Motion, plus an online virtual exhibit.
From April 10 through July 18, 2010, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. mounted a major retrospective of Muybridge's work entitled Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change. The exhibit has received favorable reviews from major publications including the New York Times.
An exhibition bringing together around 150 of Muybridge's works took place in autumn 2010 at the Tate Britain
, Millbank
, London. An exhibition of important items bequeathed by Muybridge to his birthplace of Kingston upon Thames, entitled Muybridge Revolutions, opened at the Kingston Museum
on September 18, 2010 (exactly a century since the first Muybridge exhibition at the Museum) and ran until February 12, 2011.
Animal locomotion
Animal locomotion, which is the act of self-propulsion by an animal, has many manifestations, including running, swimming, jumping and flying. Animals move for a variety of reasons, such as to find food, a mate, or a suitable microhabitat, and to escape predators...
which used multiple cameras to capture motion
Motion (physics)
In physics, motion is a change in position of an object with respect to time. Change in action is the result of an unbalanced force. Motion is typically described in terms of velocity, acceleration, displacement and time . An object's velocity cannot change unless it is acted upon by a force, as...
, and his zoopraxiscope
Zoopraxiscope
The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The...
, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.
Names
Born Edward James Muggeridge, he changed his name several times early in his US career. First he changed his forenames to the Spanish equivalent Eduardo Santiago, perhaps because of the Spanish influence on Californian place names. His surname appears at times as Muggridge and Muygridge (possibly due to misspellings), and Muybridge from the 1860s.In the 1870s he changed his first name again to Eadweard, to match the spelling of King Edward
Edward the Martyr
Edward the Martyr was king of the English from 975 until he was murdered in 978. Edward was the eldest son of King Edgar, but not his father's acknowledged heir...
shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which was re-erected in Kingston in 1850. His name remained Eadweard Muybridge for the rest of his career. However, his gravestone bears a further variant, Eadweard Maybridge.
He used the pseudonym Helios (Greek god of the sun) on many of his photographs, and also as the name of his studio and his son's middle name.
Early life and career
Muybridge was born at Kingston upon ThamesKingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...
, England on April 9, 1830. He emigrated to the US, arriving in San Francisco in 1855, where he started a career as a publisher's agent and bookseller. He left San Francisco at the end of the 1850s, and after a stagecoach accident in which he received severe head injuries, returned to England for a few years.
While recuperating back in England, he took up photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
seriously sometime between 1861 and 1866, where he learned the wet-collodion
Collodion process
The collodion process is an early photographic process. It was introduced in the 1850s and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype. During the 1880s the collodion process, in turn, was largely replaced by gelatin dry...
process.
He reappeared in San Francisco in 1866 and rapidly became successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects, although his business cards also advertised his services for portraiture. His photographs were sold by various photographic entrepreneurs on Montgomery Street (most notably the firm of Bradley
H. W. Bradley
Henry William Bradley was an American photographer. He and his partner William Rulofson were active in San Francisco, California and were responsible for photographs of many notable Californians....
& Rulofson
William Rulofson
William Herman Rulofson was a Canadian-American photographer, who along with his partner, H. W. Bradley, was considered one of the leading photographers in the city of San Francisco, California. He was also the brother of Edward H...
), San Francisco's main commercial street, during those years.
Photographing the West
Muybridge began to build his reputation in 1867 with photos of YosemiteYosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
and San Francisco (many of the Yosemite photographs reproduced the same scenes taken by Carleton Watkins
Carleton Watkins
Carleton E. Watkins was a noted 19th century California photographer.Carleton Emmons Watkins was born in Oneonta, upstate New York. He went to San Francisco during the gold rush, arriving in 1851...
). Muybridge quickly gained notice for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West, published under his pseudonym Helios. In the summer of 1873 Muybridge was commissioned to photograph the Modoc War
Modoc War
The Modoc War, or Modoc Campaign , was an armed conflict between the Native American Modoc tribe and the United States Army in southern Oregon and northern California from 1872–1873. The Modoc War was the last of the Indian Wars to occur in California or Oregon...
, one of the US Army's expeditions against West Coast Indians.
Stanford and the galloping question
Governor of California
The Governor of California is the chief executive of the California state government, whose responsibilities include making annual State of the State addresses to the California State Legislature, submitting the budget, and ensuring that state laws are enforced...
Leland Stanford
Leland Stanford
Amasa Leland Stanford was an American tycoon, industrialist, robber baron, politician and founder of Stanford University.-Early years:...
, a businessman and race-horse
Horse racing
Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...
owner, had taken a position on a popularly-debated question of the day: whether all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time during the trot. Up until this time, most paintings of horses at full gallop showed the front legs extended forward and the hind legs extended to the rear. Stanford sided with this assertion, called "unsupported transit", and took it upon himself to prove it scientifically. Stanford sought out Muybridge and hired him to settle the question.
In later studies Muybridge used a series of large cameras that used glass plates placed in a line, each one being triggered by a thread as the horse passed. Later a clockwork device was used. The images were copied in the form of silhouettes onto a disc and viewed in a machine called a Zoopraxiscope
Zoopraxiscope
The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The...
. This in fact became an intermediate stage towards motion pictures or cinematography.
Another series of photos taken at the Palo Alto Stock Farm in Stanford, California, is called Sallie Gardner at a Gallop
Sallie Gardner at a Gallop
Sallie Gardner at a Gallop was an early production experiment on June 19, 1878 that led to the development of motion pictures. The motion picture consists of 24 photographs in a fast-motion series that were shown on a zoopraxiscope. The photographs were taken by Eadweard Muybridge, who was...
or The Horse in Motion, and shows that the hooves
Hoof
A hoof , plural hooves or hoofs , is the tip of a toe of an ungulate mammal, strengthened by a thick horny covering. The hoof consists of a hard or rubbery sole, and a hard wall formed by a thick nail rolled around the tip of the toe. The weight of the animal is normally borne by both the sole...
do all leave the ground — although not with the legs fully extended forward and back, as contemporary illustrators tended to imagine, but rather at the moment when all the hooves are tucked under the horse as it switches from "pulling" with the front legs to "pushing" with the back legs. This series of photos stands as one of the earliest forms of videography.
Eventually, Muybridge and Stanford had a major falling-out concerning this research on equine locomotion: Stanford published a book The Horse in Motion which gave no credit to Muybridge despite containing his photos and his research, possibly because Muybridge lacked an established reputation in the scientific community. As a result of Muybridge's lack of credit for the work, the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
withdrew an offer to fund his stop-motion photography. Muybridge subsequently filed a lawsuit against Stanford, and lost.
Murder, acquittal and paternity
In 1874, still living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Muybridge discovered that his wife had a lover, a Major Harry Larkyns. On 17 October, he sought out Larkyns and said, "Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge and here's the answer to the letter you sent my wife"; he then killed the Major with a gunshot.Muybridge was put on trial for murder. One aspect of his defense was a plea of insanity due to a head injury that Muybridge had sustained following his stagecoach accident. Friends testified that the accident dramatically changed Muybridge's personality from genial and pleasant to unstable and erratic. The jury dismissed the insanity plea, but he was acquitted for "justifiable homicide
Justifiable homicide
The United States' concept of justifiable homicide in criminal law stands on the dividing line between an excuse, justification and an exculpation. It is different from other forms of homicide in that due to certain circumstances the homicide is justified as preventing greater harm to innocents...
". The episode interrupted his horse photography experiment, but not his relationship with Stanford, who paid for his criminal defense.
After the acquittal, Muybridge left the United States for a time to take photographs in Central America, returning in 1877. He had his son, Florado Helios Muybridge (nicknamed "Floddie" by friends), put in an orphanage. Muybridge believed Larkyns to be his son's true father, although as an adult, the son bore a remarkable resemblance to Muybridge. As an adult, Floddie worked as a ranch hand and gardener. In 1944 he was hit by a car in Sacramento
Sacramento, California
Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...
and killed.
Later work
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
in London in front of a sell out audience that included members of the Royal Family
British Royal Family
The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...
, notably the future King Edward VII. He displayed his photographs on screen and described the motion picture via his zoopraxiscope
Zoopraxiscope
The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The...
.
At the University of Pennsylvania and the local zoo Muybridge used banks of cameras to photograph people and animals to study their movement. The models, either entirely nude or with very little clothing, were photographed in a variety of undertakings, ranging from boxing, to walking down stairs, to throwing water over one another and carrying buckets of water. Between 1883 and 1886 he made a total of 100,000 images, working under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. They were published as 781 plates comprising 20,000 of the photographs in a collection titled Animal Locomotion. Muybridge's work stands near the beginning of the science of biomechanics and the mechanics of athletics.
Recent scholarship has pointed to the influence of Étienne Jules de Marey
Étienne-Jules Marey
Étienne-Jules Marey was a French scientist and chronophotographer.His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of labor photography...
on Muybridge's later work. Muybridge visited Marey's studio in France and saw Marey's stop-motion studies before returning to the U.S. to further his own work in the same area. However, whereas Marey's scientific achievements in the realms of cardiology and aerodynamics (as well as pioneering work in photography and chronophotography) are indisputable, Muybridge's efforts were to some degree artistic rather than scientific. As Muybridge himself explained, in some of his published sequences he substituted images where exposures failed, in order to illustrate a representative movement (rather than producing a strictly scientific recording of a particular sequence).
Similar setups of carefully timed multiple cameras are used in modern special effects photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
with the opposite goal of capturing changing camera angles with little or no movement of the subject. This is often dubbed "bullet time
Bullet time
Bullet time is a special and visual effect that refers to a digitally enhanced simulation of variable-speed photography used in films, broadcast advertisements, and video games...
" photography.
At the Chicago 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. Chicago bested New York City; Washington, D.C.; and St...
, Muybridge gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall, built specially for that purpose in the "Midway Plaisance" arm of the exposition. He used his zoopraxiscope
Zoopraxiscope
The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The...
to show his moving pictures
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
to a paying public, making the Hall the very first commercial movie theater.
Death
Eadweard Muybridge returned to his native England for good in 1894, published two further, popular books of his work, and died on 8 May 1904 in Kingston upon ThamesKingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...
while living at the home of his cousin Catherine Smith, Park View, 2 Liverpool Road. The house has a British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
commemorative plaque on the outside wall which was unveiled in 2004. Muybridge was cremated and his ashes interred at Woking
Woking
Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....
in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
.
Legacy
Many of Muybridge's photographic sequences have been published since the 1950s as artists' reference books. CartoonAnimated cartoon
An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...
animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
s often use Muybridge's photos as a reference when drawing their characters.
Since 1991, the company Optical Toys has published Muybridge sequences in the form of movie flipbooks.
Filmmaker Thom Andersen
Thom Andersen
Thom Andersen is a filmmaker, film critic, and teacher. He attended Berkeley in the early 1960s and then returned to his hometown of Los Angeles to attend USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he studied with Arthur Knight and eventually assisted on Knight's project THE HISTORY OF SEX IN CINEMA...
made a 1974 documentary titled Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer is a 1975 documentary film directed by Thom Andersen about the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge....
, describing his life and work.
Composer Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
's 1982 opera The Photographer
The Photographer
The Photographer is a chamber opera by composer Philip Glass that is based on the homicide trial of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The opera is based on words drawn from the trial as well as Muybridge's letters to his wife...
is based on Muybridge's murder trial, with a libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
including text from the court transcript. A promotional music video featured an excerpt of the opera dramatizing the murder and trial, and included a considerable number of Muybridge images.
The play Studies in Motion: The hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge debuted in 2006, a co-production between Vancouver's Electric Company Theatre and the University of British Columbia Theatre. While blending fiction with fact, it tells the story of Muybridge's obsession with cataloguing animal motion. The production started touring in 2010.
In 2007, Canadian poet Rob Winger
Rob Winger
Rob Winger is an Ontario-born poet.Winger received an MA in English literature from the University of Guelph in 2002 and a PhD from Carleton University in 2009....
wrote Muybridge's Horse: a poem in three phases, a long poem nominated for the Governor General's Award for Literature, Trillium Book Award
Trillium Book Award
The Trillium Award is given annually by the government of the Province of Ontario and is open to books in any genre: fiction, non-fiction, drama, children's books, and poetry. Anthologies, new editions, re-issues and translations are not eligible. Three jury members per language judge the...
for Poetry, and Ottawa Book Award
Ottawa Book Award
Ottawa Book Award and Prix du livre d'Ottawa is a Canadian literary award presented by the City of Ottawa to the best English and French language books written in the previous year by a living author residing in Ottawa. There are 4 awards each year: English fiction and non-fiction ; French fiction...
. It documented his life and obsessions in a 'poetic-photographic' style. It won the CBC Literary Award for Poetry.
In 1985, the music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
for Larry Gowan's single "(You're A) Strange Animal" prominently featured animation rotoscope
Rotoscope
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator...
d from Muybridge's work. In 1986, a galloping horse sequence was used in the background of the John Farnham
John Farnham
John Peter Farnham, AO, formerly billed as Johnny Farnham , is an English-born Australian pop singer. He was a teen pop idol from 1964 to 1979, and has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist although he briefly replaced Glenn Shorrock as...
music video for the song "Pressure Down". In 1993, the rock band U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
made a video of their song "Lemon
Lemon (U2 song)
"Lemon" is the fourth song and second single from U2's 1993 album, Zooropa. Inspired by old video footage of Bono's late mother, the lyrics describe an attempt to preserve memory through film. More than any previous U2 song, "Lemon" showcases Bono's falsetto skills, aided by atmospheric vocals from...
" into a tribute to Muybridge's techniques. In 2004, the electronic music group The Crystal Method
The Crystal Method
The Crystal Method is an American electronic music duo that was created in Los Angeles, California by Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland in the early 1990s. The Crystal Method's music has appeared in numerous TV shows, films, video games, and advertisements. The most prominent is the US television...
made a music video to their song "Born Too Slow" which was based on Muybridge's work, including a man walking in front of a background grid.
Kingston University
Kingston University
Kingston University is a public research university located in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, United Kingdom. It was originally founded in 1899 as Kingston Technical Institute, a polytechnic, and became a university in 1992....
in London, UK has a building named in recognition of Muybridge's work as one of Britain's most influential photographers.
In addition, Muybridge's work has influenced:
- Harold Eugene EdgertonHarold Eugene EdgertonHarold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton was a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
— pioneered stroboscopicStroboscopeA stroboscope, also known as a strobe, is an instrument used to make a cyclically moving object appear to be slow-moving, or stationary. The principle is used for the study of rotating, reciprocating, oscillating or vibrating objects...
and high-speed photography and film, producing an Oscar-winning short movie and many striking photographic sequences - Étienne-Jules MareyÉtienne-Jules MareyÉtienne-Jules Marey was a French scientist and chronophotographer.His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of labor photography...
— recorded first series of live action with a single camera - Thomas EakinsThomas EakinsThomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
— American artist who worked with and continued Muybridge's motion studies, and incorporated the findings into his own artwork - Thomas EdisonThomas EdisonThomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
— owned patents for motion picture cameras - William Dickson — credited as inventor of motion picture camera
- Marcel DuchampMarcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
— artist, painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2-External links:* at the Philadelphia Museum of Art* from Life magazine... - Francis Bacon — artist who made numerous paintings from photographs by Muybridge
- John GaetaJohn GaetaJohn Gaeta is an academy award winning visual effects designer best known for his work on the Matrix film trilogy and Speed Racer, where he explored and advanced the effects methods known as "Bullet Time", "Virtual Cinematography", and "Photo Anime".-Career:John C. Gaeta's career began in New York...
— used the principles of Muybridge's photography to create the bullet timeBullet timeBullet time is a special and visual effect that refers to a digitally enhanced simulation of variable-speed photography used in films, broadcast advertisements, and video games...
slow-motion technique of the 1999 movie The MatrixThe MatrixThe Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
. - Steven PippinSteven PippinSteven Pippin is an English artist. Pippin works with converted or improvised photographic equipment and kinetic sculptures....
— British artist who converted a row of laundromat washing machines into sequential cameras in the style of Muybridge
Exhibits and collections
A collection of Muybridge's equipment, including his original biunial slide lantern and Zoopraxiscope projector, can be viewed at the Kingston MuseumKingston Museum
The Kingston Museum is an MLA-accredited local-history museum in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, England. Built in 1904 and restored in 1992–1997, the museum features three permanent exhibits—"Ancient Origins"; the lottery-funded "Town of Kings", dealing with the borough's history in Saxon...
in Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...
, South West London. The University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
Archives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
hold a large collection of Muybridge's photographs, equipment, and correspondence.
In 1991, the Addison Gallery of American Art
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art, as a department of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art...
at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts
Andover, Massachusetts
Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was incorporated in 1646 and as of the 2010 census, the population was 33,201...
hosted a major exhibition of Muybridge's work, which later traveled to other venues. A book-length exhibition catalogue was also published. The Addison Gallery has significant holdings of Muybridge's photographic work.
In 2000–2001, the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
National Museum of American History
National Museum of American History
The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. Among the items on display are the original Star-Spangled Banner and Archie Bunker's...
presented the exhibition Freeze Frame: Eadweard Muybridge's Photography of Motion, plus an online virtual exhibit.
From April 10 through July 18, 2010, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. mounted a major retrospective of Muybridge's work entitled Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change. The exhibit has received favorable reviews from major publications including the New York Times.
An exhibition bringing together around 150 of Muybridge's works took place in autumn 2010 at the Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
, Millbank
Millbank
Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster...
, London. An exhibition of important items bequeathed by Muybridge to his birthplace of Kingston upon Thames, entitled Muybridge Revolutions, opened at the Kingston Museum
Kingston Museum
The Kingston Museum is an MLA-accredited local-history museum in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, England. Built in 1904 and restored in 1992–1997, the museum features three permanent exhibits—"Ancient Origins"; the lottery-funded "Town of Kings", dealing with the borough's history in Saxon...
on September 18, 2010 (exactly a century since the first Muybridge exhibition at the Museum) and ran until February 12, 2011.
Further reading
- Robert Bartlett Haas. Muybridge, Man in Motion, 1976.
- Gordon HendricksGordon HendricksGordon Hendricks was an American art and film historian.In 1961 Hendricks published the The Edison motion picture myth in which he showed that it was not Thomas Alva Edison who should be attributed with the invention of the first device for cinema screeningss, but in fact William Kennedy Laurie...
. Eadweard Muybridge, Father of the Motion Picture, 1975. - Stephen Herbert (Ed.) Eadweard Muybridge: The Kingston Museum Bequest, 2004 1-903000-07-6.
- Anita Ventura Mozley (Ed.) Eadweard Muybridge. The Stanford Years 1872–82, 1972.
- Arthur P. ShimamuraArthur P. ShimamuraArthur P. Shimamura is Professor of Psychology and faculty member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the neural basis of human memory and cognition. He received his B.A. in Experimental Psychology from the University of...
. Muybridge in Motion: Travels in Art, Psychology, and Neurology, 2002, History of Photography, Volume 26, Number 4, 341–350. - Rebecca SolnitRebecca SolnitRebecca Solnit is a writer who lives in San Francisco. She has written on a variety of subjects including the environment, politics, place, and art....
. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, 2003 ISBN 0-670-03176-3. - Philip Brookman. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change, 2010 ISBN 978-3-86521-926-8 (Steidl).
External links
- The Eadweard Muybridge Online Archive provides access to most of Muybridge's motion studies, at printable resolutions, along with a growing number of animations.
- The Compleat Muybridge Chronology,Comparative Timeline,Blog,Booklist,Texts,Memorials,Portrait Gallery,Comprehensive Links.
- Tesseract 20 Min experimental film telling the story of Eadweard Muybridge's obsession with time and its image at the turn of the century.
- Animation made of the first moving pictures in film history by Carola Unterberger-Probst
- Burns, Paul. The History of the Discovery of Cinematography An Illustrated Chronology
- Valley of the Yosemite, Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Mariposa Grove of Mammoth Trees by Eadweard Muybridge, 1872 online photo collection, The Bancroft Library
- 1872, Yosemite American Indian Life Muybridge was one of the most prolific photographers of early Yosemite American Indian life.
- Selected items from the Eadweard Muybridge Collection, University Archives and Record Center, University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
- http://www.kingston.gov.uk/browse/leisure/museum/museum_exhibitions/muybridge.htmLink to The Muybridge Collection at Kingston MuseumKingston MuseumThe Kingston Museum is an MLA-accredited local-history museum in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, England. Built in 1904 and restored in 1992–1997, the museum features three permanent exhibits—"Ancient Origins"; the lottery-funded "Town of Kings", dealing with the borough's history in Saxon...
, Kingston upon ThamesKingston upon ThamesKingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...
, Surrey.] - The University of South Florida Tampa Library's Special Collections Department retains copies of Muybridge's 11-volume Animal Locomotion Studies and similar publications by E.-J. Marey
- http://www.freezingtime.net/Website for the Film: Freezing Time on the life of Muybridge directed by Andy SerkisAndy SerkisAndrew Clement G. "Andy" Serkis is an English actor, director and author. He is popularly known for playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, for which he earned several award nominations, including the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Two Towers...
and written by Keith SternKeith SternKeith Alan Stern has produced some of the most popular biographical websites on the Internet. Since 1997 he has been collaborating with Ian McKellen on that actor's autobiographical website, McKellen.com...
.] - "The Horse In Motion" made with online animation tool.
- Eadweard Muybridge stereoscopic photographs of the Modoc War, via Calisphere, California Digital Library
- Muybridge and the Movies
- Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion, via Boston Public Library's Flickr collections
- Human and Animal Locomotion, via the USC Digital Library at the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. - Teacher's Guide: Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton, and Beyond: A Study of Motion and Time — a 2-part introduction to the work of Muybridge and Edgerton, written at a high school level.
- Freeze Frame: Eadweard Muybridge's Photography of Motion — online exhibit based on 2000–2001 show at the National Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution)
