Boar Walking
1884
Eadweard Muybridge
born Kingston-upon-Thames, England, 1831; died Kingston-upon-Thames, England, 1904
In May 1872, Muybridge made his first photograph of a horse trotting on a racetrack in Sacramento, California. From 1884 to early 1886, he would take over 20,000 photographs documenting various stages of human and animal activity.
Muybridge's working method involved at least two units of twelve cameras each to record these rapid movements in real time. As photography historian Keith Davis perceptively wrote: "Indeed, these pictures generated much discussion on the nature of vision and representation-the difference between 'normal' and 'instantaneous' impressions, for example, and the correspondence between scientific and artistic truths." When viewing these sequences on a rotating projector lantern apparatus, Muybridge's photographs were set into motion and essentially signaled the birth of motion pictures.
Collotype
Sheet h.: 9 1/16 in.
Sheet w.: 11 7/8 in.
Plate h.: 6 9/16 in.
Plate w.: 9 1/2 in.
Photography Purchase Fund
93.56
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
