EDWEARD MUYBRIDGE / EARLY SEQUENCES OF HORSES

Edweard Muybridge was born April 9, 1830 and died May 8, 1903 and was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. At the age of 20, he emigrated to America as a bookseller, first to New York, and then to San Francisco. In 1860, Muybridge was a successful bookseller and he left his bookshop in care of his brother while he was to go and sail back to England to buy more antiquarian books. However, he missed the boat and instead left San Francisco in July 1860 to travel by stagecoach over the southern route in Saint Louis, by rail to New York City, then by boat back to England. However, in central Texas, Muybridge suffered severe head injuries in a violent runway stagecoach crash which injured every passenger on board and even killed one person. Muybridge was quickly removed form the vehicle but hit his head on a rock or on another hard object. He was taken 150 miles to Fort Smith, Arkansas, for his treatement. He stayed here for three month, recovering from symptoms like double vision, confused thinking, impaired sense of taste and smell etc. Shortly after staying here he went to New York City, where he continued in treatment for nearly a year before being able to sail to England.

During his time recuperating in England he took up professional photography, learning the wet-plate collodion process, and secured at least two British patents for his inventions. He went back to San Fransisco in 1867, and in 1868 his large photographs of Yosemite Valley made him world-famous. In 1875 he travelled for more than a year in Central America on a photographic expedition. In the 1880s, he entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate movements.

Muybridge spent his later years giving public demonstrations and teachings of his photography and early motion picture sequences, travelling back to England and Europe to publicise his work. He also edited and published compilations of his work, which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific/industrial photography. In 1894, he returned back to England permanently, then shortly in 1904, the Kingston Museum was opened in his hometown and contained a collection of his equipment.

In 1872, the former businessman and race-horse owner, hired Muybridge for some photographic studies. He had taken a position on a popularly debated question "whether all four feet of a horse were off the ground at the same time while trotting." In 1872, Muybridge began experimenting with an array of 12 cameras photographing a galloping horse in a sequence of shots. The human eye could not break down the action at the quick stride of the trot and gallop. Up until this point of discovery, most artists painted horses at a trot with one foot always on the ground, and at a full gallop with the front legs extended to the rear, and all feet off the ground. So Muybirdge was hired to prove this question. Between 1878 and 1884, Muybridge perfected his method of horses in motion, proving that they do have all four hooves off the ground during their running stride. In 1872, Muybridge settled Stanford's question with a single negative showing the horse airborne at the trot.