Intro video

Eadweard Muybridge(pronounced as ‘Edward Mybridge’)

The Father of Motion Pictures

Interesting facts about Muybridge...

He changed his name several times throughout his life…

He used the name ‘Helios’ on many of his photographs, the name of his studio and middle name for his son …

He started at Kingston-on-Thames, England. He then moved to the US, particularly San Francisco, and then he eventually ended up back in England…

He suffered a stagecoach accident in which he received severe head injuries...

He took up photography seriously sometime between 1861 and 1866, where he learned darkroom photography…

He became successful in photography, focusing on landscape...

He created a series of his photographs of Yosemite were exhibited abroad and brought him a medal…

He was one of the first to photograph Alaska…

Muybridge's photographic sequences have been published since the 1950s as artists' reference books…

Cartoon animators often use Muybridge's photos as a reference when drawing their characters…

He gained worldwide fame photographing animal and human movement imperceptible to the human eye…

Interesting facts about Muybridge (cont’d)...

Leland Stanford, Governor of California, laid a wager with a friend, around $25,000, that a galloping horse lifted all four feet from the ground at once. He hired Muybridge to prove this contention photographically.

After discovering that his wife had a lover, a Major Harry Larkyns. Muybridge found Larkyns and said, "Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge and here's the answer to the letter you sent my wife"; he then shot the Major dead.

Muybridge was put on trial for murder. He tried to plea insanity due to his earlier stage coach accident. The jury dismissed the insanity plea, but he was acquitted for "justifiable homicide".

After the acquittal, he had his son put in an orphanage. He believed Larkyns to be his son's true father, although as an adult, the son bore a remarkable resemblance to Muybridge.

Controversies...

As stated before, Stanford bet a friend whether all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time during the trot. Stanford took it upon himself to prove it scientifically. Stanford sought by seeking out Muybridge and hiring him to settle the wager.

Muybridge used photography to prove that there was a moment in a horse’s gallop when all four hooves were off the ground at once.

How did he do this? He used a mechanical device with strings (these were attached to shutters) stretched across a horse track. He then created this method via electronically. Muybridge was awarded two patents in 1879 for these synchronization devices.

The Horse in Motion 1872

The Phenakistoscope and the Zoopraxiscope, 1893

AKA the ‘spindle viewer’, - the phenakistoscope was an early animation device to show motion. This was used in conjunction with the zoopraxiscope to create the stop motion projector device.Although the phenakistoscope was not created by Muybridge, he did invent the zoopraxiscope.The zoopraxiscope was the first known movie projector to be used .

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 movements, ranging from boxing, to walking down stairs, to throwing water over one another and carrying buckets of water. He made a total of 20,000 photographs in a collection titled Animal Locomotion. Muybridge's work stands near the beginning of the science of biomechanics and the mechanics of athletics.

For 100 years, historians considered these photographs to be scientific studies of the body in motion.

Other Studies of Motion

1974 documentary titled Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer, (by Filmmaker Thom Andersen) describing his life and work.

1985 music video for Larry Gowan's single "Strange Animal"

1993 music video "Lemon" - the rock band U2 made a tribute to Muybridge's techniques.

2004 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.

Tributes to Muybridge...

References

Encyclopædia Britannica

Burns, Paul. The History of the Discovery of Cinematography An Illustrated Chronology

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