Eadweard Muybridge

Muybridge and his influence on the world of art                          

Eadweard Muybrige, born in England in 1830, has had a profound effect on the world of photography, cinematography and the art world in general.  Although most famed for his images of moving horses, he had already achieved recognition through his landscape photography and as a war photographer following his move to America in 1852.  His progression towards motion photography was fuelled by the whim of a wealthy railroad baron and passionate race horse breeder, who was trying to win a bet to prove that a horse lifted all four feet off the ground when it galloped.  Muybrige’s first success was to capture a picture of a horse at trot, but by 1878 he had designed his own high speed electronic shutter and electro timer, to be used in conjunction with 24 cameras in an attempt to record one of Stanford’s thoroughbreds at a gallop.  The cameras were triggered in sequence, four every second as the horse galloped past and finally the gait of a horse was captured in images.  Suddenly photography had gone beyond ‘freezing the moment,’ for the first time enabling human beings to see something faster than their own eyes in a series of photographic images.  Muybrige immediately saw the potential of this and began to create an encyclopaedia of motion that is still widely used today as a study of movement and the human form.

At the same time, many artists were becoming increasingly aware of photographic developments but it was shunned by some as an art form for failed painters.  The impressionist movement was well under way and Degas was one artist who took a different view.  He embraced the medium and its possibilities and began to explore it further, predominantly with a view to enhancing his studies of ballerinas in movement.   His interest was sparked initially as he began collecting ‘cartes de visite’, particularly those showing ballerinas in a variety of poses.   But he was an experimental artist, keen to explore technological developments and soon he was drawn towards Muybrige’s experiments with the moving image.  Degas became increasingly preoccupied with capturing movement accurately within his paintings, as well as beginning to experiment with composition, representing a series of figures in frieze style paintings, following Muybrige’s invention of working in series.  Last year’s exhibition at the Royal academy – “Degas and the Ballet -picturing movement” paid homage to the work of Muybrige and his influence on the development of Degas’ work.  Degas was so enamoured that he eventually took up photography himself and his camera became one of his most prized possessions.

 

Muybrige’s studies not only helped influence art at the time but he also paved the way to the development of the motion picture with his invention the zoopraxiscope.  This device enabled him to animate sequences from his motion studies.  Muybrige existed in a progressive time and he himself embraced opportunities for innovation.  He invented photographic and moving image projection techniques that have helped to underpin the motion picture industry of today.  His influence on the world of art was enormous, enabling artists to represent figures in movement in a realistic way that had previously evaded them.  A true entrepreneur, visionary and moderniser, respected in his own time and beyond, he has earned his place as one of the world’s most influential photographers.